The same grade on a report can evoke positive emotions for one person, and very negative feelings for another.

Everyone is part of this phenomenon when passing information along and attaching their own emotion to it.

Information and emotions are like a bus: it starts empty and along the road (flow) more and more people (emotions) just hop on. Until the bus is overcrowded. The longer the trip, the more “stuff” is added.

It gets harder to separate the original information from all added emotions when you receive input from others.

It gets harder to separate “your issues” from “somebody’s issues”, which part of the emotional charge is yours, and which one is from others.

If someone’s fear has colored the information you receive, and you adopt this feeling of fear without verifying if this negativity is truly yours, you are passing problems that aren’t there; you are taking on problems that aren’t yours.

You can practice by reflection and setting boundaries.

More important is to take the time to digest information. To separate “your stuff” from “their stuff”.

I am almost making it sound like the consumption of food. Because I like it as a metaphor for information consumption.

And, because Ali Anani wrote a fabulous presentation about the metaphor: The Information Digestive System. It’s all in there: capacity of information, the context and emotions attached and slow digestion: making the information your own.

Image by James Cridland.

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - Information And Attached Emotions. Together On The Bus. is a post from: Project Shrink.

My friend Ali Anani takes it even a step further in his great presentation “Comments On Slideshare Their Mapping and Value Added.

Click here if you can’t see the presentation above.

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - Comments On Slideshare: Their Mapping and Value Added is a post from: Project Shrink.

I love to write and talk about Project Management… uhm, Leadership… or “The Thing That A Project Manager Does To Move His Project In The Proper Direction, Related To People“.

I want to share new and exciting stuff and hope it challenges your thinking, enhances your mental flexibility and provides you with useful information.

I really appreciate the audience (hi!). Although I sometimes say things excited and full of passion (“you need to…”), it’s always an invitation to look at the information and consider it for your own use. If you like it, great! If you have no use for it, that’s cool too. Because I appreciate you, as my readers.

Luckily for me, the internet is a huge place, I mean, BIG! From billions of people, a handful of them (hi!) take the time to read my ideas and thoughts about “The Thing That A PM…”

I need an audience to share my thoughts. So does everyone.

But what if I tried to do my thing limited to one building with one Project Manager? The chance that this one PM likes talking about Bobsleds and Pirate Ships are zero. And even if, one person is not an audience. (yeah, yeah, I should learn humility… I know).

I either stop doing my thing. Or I look outside the building. Or I turn into myself and become weird.

If you want to nurture information leadership (calling it “thought leadership” would be too much, would it?), you have to make sure there is a big enough audience. Keeping things limited to one part of the organization might be counterproductive sometimes, just because of this reason.

What I recommend (kindly suggest) is to go through this presentation about Knowledge Management in Enterprise 2.0. It explains why knowledge sharing in most companies doesn’t work. Hint: this is the exact same argument, but better presented.

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - Size Matters: Without Enough Audience, No Leaders is a post from: Project Shrink.

This post is an early draft of a concept I am working on. It will focus on the supply and demand of information to nodes in social networks. People have a need for information (demand), some people have a need for an audience for their information (supply). I will use the notion of leaders (supply) and followers (demand). Inherent to social networks is the fact that you have way more followers than leaders. The system maintains this balance. Problems occur when boundaries make it difficult to ensure this balance.

Image by James Cridland.

Yes, this is a simplification of reality. It’s a model. It’s not The Real World… argh … don’t get me started about The Real World.

It needs references. It needs some examples and clarification. I am working on that. But I also was kind of hoping on your feedback

20% Holds 80% Of Information

Within social networks information is not distributed equally. A few have a lot. A lot have few. I think that information follows a Pareto distribution: 80% of the information is held by or accessible from 20% of the people.

When looking at the flow of information in organizations, you will find the existence of a few hubs: nodes in the network that are highly connected. In organizations not everyone has a relationship with every other employee. There are a couple of employees that know a lot of people, and most people in the organization know these few so-called “hubs”, leaders in information brokerage.

In networks you find many more followers than leaders.

In human networks you’ll find more people listening than speaking. Looking at the online world, we’ll see the 90-9-1 principle, which says that “in a community, the rule of thumb is that 90% of visitors only view the content, 9% only comment or react to it, and 1% create it.” Few people create, lots of people consume.

A person can be a leader and a follower at the same time, but for different topics. Leading in Project Management and following in SOA technology.

This is not some evil plot. It’s inherent to the social system.

From the information input perspective, you don’t want to be swamped in information. You limit the amount of sources. You want these few sources to be “the best”. “The best” being measured in popular demand skews the choice of information hubs towards a limited few. You want your sources easy to find, which also turns you to the more popular hubs. It’s similar to “the rich get richer”. If you are a popular hub, you become even more popular.

From the information output side you get a similar view. Leaders need demand for their information. A higher demand means larger influence, more recognition, a larger reputation. Leaders will behave to maximize the amount of followers. They need to be a very small minority.

Leaders are born with this urge. You really want to be a hub.

Within social networks there is a balance for the distribution of leaders and followers. There is an “natural amount” of hubs within a network.

Blue Ocean, Red Ocean

Once a follower has found a good source, it will remain connected as long as the need for the information exists. The relationship from follower-to-leader remains mainly stable.

What does a leader do without followers? It’s going to look for them throughout the network. Hubs move around to stay hubs.

For example, a couple of years ago a blog about Project Management was almost alone in its category. You could have quite a following with your blog. As more and more blogs come into existence about this topic, it gets harder and harder to build up your audience. Lot of leaders and not enough followers. An imbalance between supply and demand of information.

So, hubs start to move. They are leaving the red ocean, in search for a blue one. “Blue Ocean Strategy” is a business strategy book written by Kim and Mauborgne, that promotes creating new market space or “Blue Ocean” rather than competing in an existing crowded industry (Red Ocean).

In the case of Project Management blogs, you are trying to differentiate yourself. Looking for a different or more specific niche. Change the medium by adding video, audio and presentations. Looking for your fresh, blue ocean.

Next up:

What happens when boundaries prohibit movement and a leader cannot move throughout the network? What if you shrink to ocean into a pond (moving from organization to project)?

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - Leaders And Followers In Social Networks is a post from: Project Shrink.

Following are two strategies that can be used to align means. To provide you with some ideas. To start the discussion.

Patterning – Going Through The Motions

In essence, with this strategy the project team is told what the means are; the larger organization knows best. This idea originates from Jeff Sutherland in “Shock Therapy: Bootstrapping Hyperproductive Scrum”. If you have a new team that has no experience with Scrum, you will put a very experienced Scum Master in charge and he will set the rules. Relentlessly.

Only a few rules, that make up the basics of Scrum, but they have to be followed with strong discipline. The Scrum Master will make sure this happens.
Set the rules first, than, after a while, let go when it becomes natural. This is called “patterning”.

Continuous Transparent Feedback

A human system always communicates with its environment and based upon the feedback it gets from it, alters its behavior. If a group of animals will drink water from a well and one of the groups dies because of it, they entire group may search for a different well. If a company introduces a new product, and sees its stock plummeting because of it, it might change its strategy.

It is therefor essential that the project members get continuous feedback on their own performance and the environment. This is where the use of analytics, metrics, “in-your-face” information visualization and plain old coaching comes in. By providing feedback to the team on how well they perform under the current project rule set, they will adapt to more effective means if needed.

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - Two Strategies For Aligning Means is a post from: Project Shrink.

“Here is (roughly), the project management problem I am trying to solve. Say that you have a software development project with coders in multiple countries, time zones, and cultures. How does the project manager direct and control a project without lengthy status meetings at ungodly hours? We need a system that does not require direct communication or direction – this is where OODA helps. Next we need clear ground rules for team participants. This is the theory I am working out. My draft nickname for this system is “Two Yeses”.”

Image by Dalbera.

I am drafting a response for a couple of days now It will not fit in the comment box.

I will need a series of blog posts instead.

“The Project Shrink Information Flow”-series… or if someone knows a more hyped, over-the-top title, drop me a comment.

1. Two Ways Of Communicating: Broadcast And Peer To Peer
2. You Can Decide How You Communicate: Rules Of Engagement
3. Does Transparency Lead To More Ethical Behavior?
4. Purpose Of Communication: What Is It Good For?
5. Filtering Information: Why You Cannot See Everything
6. Quality Of Information: Do You Trust Your Cousin Vinnie?

Before I start, i hope you check out the interesting discussion over at Project Lifestyle.

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - Solving The Project Communication Problem is a post from: Project Shrink.

Reality doesn’t fit into our head. It is too complex for us to comprehend. Our mechanism to cope with this problem: we think “Gaussian”, we stereotype. It is the human need to categorize everything. We just have to put the world around us in neat boxes. And if we put things in the wrong box, the whole mechanism breaks down.

Recommended post: Black Swan: The Link Between Mind, Complexity And Resilience

We don’t thoroughly analyze a situation. We see “thin-slices” of reality. We draw conclusions from a narrow period of an experience. We sense “a pattern” we recognize in human interaction.

Recommended post: Thin-slicing Project Managers

Patterns are dynamic systems in action, a human system seen over a time period. Patterns are trends (time) and involve dependencies with other systems.

Recommended post: Projects As A Complex Adaptive System: Why Bother?

To spot such trends in projects we use metrics as indicators. We need to learn to use them properly to assist in detecting potential problems. System View is a technique that is useful in this area. By looking at changes in variables (the metrics) one can refine the problem situation by using the several archetypes System View provides. By doing this, you are passing the superficial symptoms, and going straight for the problems heart.

Recommended article (PDF): Project Profiling With Systems Thinking

We use metrics as indicators. We need to visualize the data in such a way that trends and dependencies get visible. The Gantt chart e.g. is a bad example. Tufte presents a design for a project management interface that addresses some of the problems with rendering large Gantt Charts. He advocates splitting the chart into two views. At the top of the chart, you see the project timeline laid out in phases, with the current phase denoted with a unique color. On the bottom half of the chart, the local view basically zooms in on the current phase to display more detail.

Recommended posting: The Death Of Gantt Charts?

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - Mind, Complex Systems And Information Visualization is a post from: Project Shrink.

When the city of Gotham needs Batman, they will project the Bat-logo high into the sky for
everybody to see. Including Batman himself. Wherever he will be, he will get the information without a doubt (Unless it is clouded, he is locked in the Batcave, or gets problems with his eye-sight). The lesson from Batman is: to get information to people without locating them first, put it central enough so the changes that they get it, increases.

The agile community provides us with the concept of “information radiators”:

“An information radiator is a large display of critical team information that is continuously updated and located in a spot where the team can see it constantly… Information radiators help amplify feedback, empower teams and focus a team on work results.” from AgileAdvice

You can see some great examples in this article about Kanban boards.

Because of its “in your face” location it coordinates the movements of the team automatically. Team members can see instantly what they have to do next. This process is transparent, all the team members have the same information and therefor the same view on project reality. The social process of the team takes care that people who are lacking behind are assisted to keep up the pace, and if someone is taking a wrong turn the teams [TAG-Tec]collective intelligence[/TAG-Tec] can be used to correct this. So information radiators are all about feedback, empowerment and focus.

In essence this way of communication is really broadcasting; information from one member of the group is communicated to all other members. But the mechanism used is more of satellite broadcasting: you beam it up to one central place and the masses can consume it.

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - Information Radiators and Batman is a post from: Project Shrink.

When I got my first class on computer networks, I was hooked. I loved the idea of small packets of information hopping from one computer to another. Amazed about how the information always seemed to arrive at the right spot, even if there were a gazillion computers connected, like on the Internet. Although I never worked in that particular field of information technology, I still remember an important lesson from the routing-algorithms that could be used. To find out which way another computer was located within the network, you can use one single computer as the main guide; that host has all the data needed to locate the computer you want to send your information package to.

This sound very effective at first, and it even is, if not too many PCs and mainframes are connected to the network. However, when you are thinking about the Internet, forget it. The information is just too much, and always outdated if you try to have a single map of the net. You have also a single point of failure in this scenario. If this one computer crashes, not one package will arrive at its destination. In search for alternatives, my mind was fixed on needing a map of the network. As it turned out, you can also have algorithms without the need for a image of the entire network; if you get a data package, you just give it to a computer you are connected with, and that accepts it the fastest. I never forget the new: the hot-potato-algorithm. After a while, the package will end if with its destination.

Social Networks

People in small and large groups can be viewed as networks. In this particular, social networks. Every person is indicated as a dot, and any relationship between dots are drawn as a line between the dots. The person is the computer, and the relationship is the network cable. As networks are a particular type of graphs, the official terms are edges for the dots and vertices for the lines. The field of social networking analysis can provide us with some insights, structures and definitions when looking at stakeholders in groups. “A social network analysis examines the structure of social relationships in a group to uncover the informal connections between people.” [1] What exactly makes up the connection, the relationship between the people in the graph, is a choice of the analyst. Communication, awareness, trust, decision making and interactions of any kind. The social network analysis might reveal a pattern that could point to, or explain the occurrence of, a problem.

Being The Bottleneck In Your Project

Suppose you work as a Team Lead for a development group. The teams performance is not what you would have expected if you consider the experience of its members. You know just the problem: they are lousy programmers, despite their experience. You just do it yourself and leave those incompetent fools to their own devices. If I would visit your project as a Project Profiler, aware of “a” problem, not aware of your opinion, I could try to plot a network of the communication of bug-reports and requirements. This should not be too difficult as most software projects have requirements and issues logged in a database, with some kind of work-flow who is assigned to the task. Great resource of information. I will see requirements drip in from user groups, to project manager, to team lead, and further. A social network is a nice visual aid, and I will make the arrows of information flow thicker if more information is passed to a particular person.

Guess what? All big fat arrows are pointing towards you in the network. You have a very high centrality. Centrality is the extent to which a person is in the center of a network [1]. It seems that all information about requirements flows through you, and very little information flows from you, especially towards your team members. The reason why you do this, remains to be discovered, but you are caught. You are identified as the problem. Another great day for the Project Profiler.

Sitting Close Together

Not every stakeholder is interacting in a group the same with all other stakeholders. Sometimes people will talk to each other every hour, e.g. when they are in the same room and part of the same team; in other cases people will never see or speak each other at all during the course of the project (the lonely tester and the financial director for example). When viewing stakeholder as a group of interactions, not every pair will be the same; in the corresponding network there will be no line from every dot to all other dots in the network. You will see some form of clustering; smaller groups that have a high degree of interaction. People that will communicate more with each other because of the fact that they are closer located, or in the same team, or need to because of their tasks. Looking at the most simple form, you will see that stakeholders from the same group are more tighter nit together. A group can be defined by having the same or a closely related role within the project (see table).

Among certain members a higher level of interaction will occur. Here the term “density” is used. “It is a proportion that indicates the number of actual ties present in the group relative to the number of possible ties in the group (i.e., if everyone had a relationship with everyone else in the group).” [1] If certain parts of a social network have a higher density, that can indicate the formation of so-called “sub-groups” or “cliques”. People that connect sub-groups together are called “hubs”. If we take a look at projects, you can image that the Project Manager is some kind of super-hub.

[1] Inside Social Network Analysis, Kate Ehrlich and Inga Carboni

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - Using Social Network Analysis: Are You The Center Of Your Stakeholder Network? is a post from: Project Shrink.