If people start bringing cookies to go with the tea, the ritual becomes stronger.

While you are drinking tea, you are part of this Tea-Drinking Group. When you are not in the ritual, you’re out of the group.

The ritual creates boundaries of the group.

When you participate in the daily tea drinking ceremony, you are so in.

I described five exercises to bootstrap a group culture.

You need an initiation ceremony where all participants can be present. If people show up and do the exercises together they are so in this new culture. If they don’t show up, they’re not.

The Gathering. Bootstrapping As A Ritual.

We need a bootstrapping initiation ceremony as a ritual.

We need A Gathering.

Image by CalidellPhoto.

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. - A Gathering And A Tea Drinking Group. is a post from: Project Shrink.

Do you know this quote? If you do, we have something in common, we both like the “Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy” enough to know some of its text by heart. I would even assume we have a similar taste of humor.

When interacting with people you have just met, you can use this mechanism. Drop a quote from your favorite movie or book, and see if people respond. If not, that’s fine. If they do know its origin, you just created a short cut to connecting on a more intense level. You just established that you are both “the same”. At least, for some part.

Dave Prior and I discussed the use of verbal clues, or tokens as he calls them, in the second part of our recent podcast.

It’s about using quotes, or language in general, as a kind of “social marker“:

““Social markers” is a term created by Hugh MacLeod whose blog, GapingVoid, defines social markers as “ a prime form of social shorthand, that people use to STAKE OUT the ecosystem they’re occupying”. A brands social marker can be either good or bad. It is tagged by the conversations of those that have experienced the brands product, service or culture.”

By dropping “social markers” you give “your kind of people” an opportunity to identify themselves.

It’s not limited to language. You might wear a hat. Or even a duck, as Havi Brooks explains:

“I have a duck. I am a biggified blah blah expert whose business partner is a duck.
People who get it and think it’s cool are totally in.
People who think it’s stupid, or suspect that she’s — ewwwwwwwwwww — some kind of marketing ploy, are out. But not because I have to ask them to leave or anything. They just self-select out. They don’t stick.
Having red-velvet-rope Selma around (and let’s be honest, I don’t do anything without her) turns out to be a great way to help people find their way in or out.”

The use of social markers is something that fascinates me. It’s useful to anyone working for short periods of time with people they don’t know and might almost have no authority over.

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. - Social Markers. Here I Am, Brain The Size Of A Planet. is a post from: Project Shrink.

But not all individuals like the same culture. People have preferences. Some like plan-driven approaches. Some like pure agile.

Three things determine the acceptance of the project culture…

No threat.

The new way of doing things should not threaten your position. If you don’t produce much, but manage to fly under the radar, unnoticed, you are not happy when radical transparency is introduced. We discussed the perceived threat that agile might bring some weeks ago:

“The difficulty comes when Agile starts to create transparency and accountability. Most organizations are not used to that, and will go through many “growing pains” that will either slow down or completely stop an Agile adoption effort. … When the Project Manager starts pushing more decisions onto the sponsor, and more accountability onto the project team, things can get awkward and frustrating.”

Make sense.

The “way of doing things” should make sense. It should be perceived as being useful. Some company policies can make no sense, and enforcing them onto the team can be a source for resistance. We all have experienced these kind of situations.

A friend of mine told me once … “On a project where I was one of several PMs, weekly progress reports had to be written and send to all other Project Managers. After a while I got the impression that no one was actually reading these things, because of the kind of questions I was getting – answers were all in the reports. As I was not fond of reporting just for the sake of reporting anyway, I started little irritating experiments like issuing identical reports with different dates, adding nonsense risks, just to see if anyone was paying attention. As you might have guessed, no responses what so ever.”

Right group.

We, Project Managers, radiate to the outside world our icons like Gantt Charts, two-digits precise risk assessments and large documents that seems to cover every little aspect imaginable. If you are a member of our group, you ooze control. We also have a specific language that sets us apart from other mortals. By adopting our symbols, our rituals and speak newbie PMs try to affiliate themselves with the group called Professional Project Managers.

If you want to be affiliated with a certain social group, you have no problem what so ever, in adopting the rules of engagement associated with that group.

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. - Acceptance Of The Project Culture is a post from: Project Shrink.

One set of rules for everyone. Everyone should know the same set of rules…

Humans … have “rules” about how we do things “around here”. It is not hardwired however. For us it’s software, an operating system called “Culture” that can be upgraded or switched entirely. It is the culture of a group that determines what we think is important and how we interact with others.

A clear choice between an agile or a plan-driven project approach is a choice in culture. It sets the ground rules for “how we do things around here”.

Image by jlwelsh.

If the entire team uses the same rules on how to conduct meetings, which artifacts to create, which rituals to perform, coordination without central control will become possible.

The means, the rules of engagement, must be these 3 things…

Simple.

And short. And sweet. If everyone should hold the same view of the rules, the threshold for learning should be low. Scrum is short and easy to explain. The entire PMBoK itself is too large, a subset is needed, always.

Accessible.

Team members must be able to reference the rule set quickly in case they need to look something up. If it’s available on the web or intranet, people will use it. “Accessible” means an easy search function, not an glossary with a gazillion entries and links.

Label Must Fit.

If you use a “standard” rule set by it’s name, like Scrum, XP, Prince2, you really have to use the entire set that is covered by the label. PINO, as in Prince In Name Only, or SINO, Scrum In Name Only, is worst case. People will assume they are working according to a certain set of rules, when in reality they are not. Total misalignment.

Johanna Rothman recently wrote a great post that is related to this topic:

“One of the questions people have is: Can we do this partway? No, not Scrum or any other agile lifecycle. You either do it all or you’re not doing agile.”

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. - The Rules For The Rules Of Engagement is a post from: Project Shrink.

Social media is all about having a “conversation”. An exchange of information between persons.

You can write your question in a word document. Upload it. Send me a mail. I check the mail. Download the document. Answer the question. Well, you get the idea.

Yes, it’s a hassle. But that is not why this conversation isn’t “social media”.

Photography by From A Second Story.

Social media puts the emphasis on the person in the conversation.

It is not only about the message itself, but also about the persona’s of the people involved in the exchange.

That is why we love big photos of REAL people next to the conversation. That is why it’s important to have an prominent “about” page on your blog.

When we have a conversation the actual content of the message is only a small part of the story. Based upon our perception of the other person we fill in blanks, we create assumptions, we draw conclusions and color the message to a more “detailed” image.

Social media supports multiple mechanisms to help us fill in the blanks.

LinkedIn displays the badges of the groups you are a member of. People see the groups you are associating yourself with and create assumptions based on that. I am a member of the Triiibes group; so I must be cool.

The mechanism works the same as the “I am a PC, I am a Mac” campaign. If you have a PC, people think you are a nerd, if you have a Mac, people think you are cool and creative.

LinkedIn provides recommendations. People write recommendations for other people. Building a reputation. If I need a plumber, I ask my neighbour. I trust my neighbour, so I trust the plumber he recommends. The reputation that is build up and propagated is used by me to build up a mental construct of the persona.

Social media puts the person back into online conversations. That is what makes it “social”.

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. - What Makes Social Media Social? is a post from: Project Shrink.

Image by jlwelsh.

Humans also have “rules” about how we do things “around here”. It is not hardwired however. For us it’s software, an operating system called “Culture” that can be upgraded or switched entirely. It is the culture of a group that determines what we think is important and how we interact with others.

A clear choice between an agile or a plan-driven project approach is a choice in culture. It sets the ground rules for “how we do things around here”.

PINO, as in Prince In Name Only, or SINO, Scrum In Name Only, is worst case. It signals a split culture. The mouth says something different than the mind thinks. The rules of engagement don’t have to be lengthy or detailed to the lowest level. But they have to be shared!

That is why Jessica suggests successful virtual teams first agree on how they will interact and when.

That is why Jurgen implemented Scrum also for its name. It describes “how we do things around here”. And everyone can read the description on the web.

The first steps to solving the project communication problem is recognizing you can decide your rules of engagement (it’s not hardwired, there may be many choices) and everybody should be using the same set of rules.

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. - You Decide How You Communicate: Rules Of Engagement is a post from: Project Shrink.

Photography by Dylan Parker

A couple of years ago I was asked during a sales presentation what I thought was the most essential ingredient for a successful project. My answer was “mutual trust”. People
in the room were staring at me like I was some kind of Softy Oozy New Age Treehugger. I switched very fast to the normal “plan-and-control” crap to get happy faces again.

Today I would provide the same answer to that question. Trust is essential to doing successful projects, and therefor a core concept for Project Management. But to avoid this “Treehugger” image, let me give you a view on how trust can be modelled, so we put some hands and feet to this rather abstract idea.

As a starting point we take the Prisoners Dilemma (PD) as discussed in this posting. In essence it is a situation where

• 1) if people cooperate both have success,
• 2) if one person is taking advantage of the other (defect) this person has an even larger benefit, but the other suffers a loss,
• 3) if both persons defect they loose both. In a situation like being in prison, you have only those two options, cooperate and defect.

However in more general circumstances, like projects, you can have a third: don’t play, walk away, just exit. For this posting I will simplify a project to a series of prisoners dilemma’s where the strategies can be cooperate, defect and exit.

Earlier I talked about the idea of “iterative PDs” where an enormous series of PDs are performed behind each other and the choice of strategy is based upon the outcomes of the previous iterations (remember Tit-For-tat? ). History plays an important role in choosing a strategy. Central question is “Do you trust the other party to cooperate?” “Trust” is defined as “have confidence or faith in” but also as “reliance: certainty based on past experience”. Based upon the things that happen in the past, you adapt your strategy.

Having Only One Shot

But what if you haven’t done a zillion iterations? What if you meet a person for the first time and you are confronted with a prisoners dilemma? Researchers call this the “one-shot prisoners dilemma”. In a situation like this, people are trying to determine the “trustworthiness” of others. They are trying to read “telltale signs”, look for behavior or other marks that they identify with trustworthiness. This might be as simple as being friendly and saying “hello” every time you see someone down the hall. Perhaps you have automatically more trust in someone wearing a suit, or a person with PhD behind his name. The idea is that you are trying to detect signs of trustworthiness, whatever
that my be for you.

Next to this detection, the projection of your own intentions plays a role in the decision of the strategy; if you want to cooperate you are more likely to be biased into “seeing” the other as trustworthy. So, we use projection and detection as a mechanism to compensate for the lack of history one has in one-shot Prisoner Dilemma’s.

How people detect the tell-tale signs of trustworthiness is not only based upon behavioral markers that society associates with it; it has also to do with the similarity of the other with you. Persons that are more viewed as being equal or “the same” or more likely to be considered honest and sincere towards you. Translated to terms of social networks: people closer in social networks are more likely to consider each other trustworthy than people further apart.

This is not a one dimensional thing, people are associated with multiple social networks and groups. And every social group has its own rituals and signs that communicate its uniqueness towards the world outside the group. If you have a lot of aspects associated with a certain social group, you will more likely be considered trustworthy by members of the same group.

The only question remaining is: do you trust this model?

This posting is largely based upon THE EVOLUTION OF TRUST AND COOPERATION. BETWEEN STRANGERS:. A COMPUTATIONAL MODEL

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. - Treehugger Project Management: Is Trust Important? is a post from: Project Shrink.

It might not come as a surprise for you, after all those articles that I wrote about this subject, but if in a project I have to follow a procedure just-because-the-company-says-so we have a serious problem. I can try to comply, and I may even pull it of for a couple of days. But there comes a point where I cannot hold back, and start ignoring the procedure and will do my own thing. True story: on a project where I was one of several PMs, weekly progress reports had to be written and send to all other Project Managers. After a while I got the impression that no one was actually reading these things, because of the kind of questions I was getting (answers were all in the reports).

As I was not fond of reporting just for the sake of reporting anyway, I started little irritating experiments like issuing identical reports with different dates, adding nonsense risks, just to see if anyone was paying attention. As you might have guessed, no responses what so ever. So, I stopped writing the reports. All hell broke loose. You have to write the reports. It says so in our Project Management Handbook. After a while, still not issuing that particular report, I was getting a name about never writing any reports, or structured information what so ever. Although this wasn’t true at the moment (I was writing enough documents and sending enough information about relevant issues), in retrospect, after a longer period this started to be true. When hearing my refusal enough times, I actually started behaving that way: I was really starting to not share information. Was a long time ago and I am cured, but it made me wonder.

What I was experiencing is called deviant behavior, not performing the behavior that is considered normal within society or a particular social group. Although the ideas originate from criminology, the concepts also apply to other smaller pieces of society, like projects. The overall idea is that a social groups has its own perception of the ideal life. There is a general conception of how things should be done, what the right way is to operate as a member in that particular group. Get an education. Get a job. Get married. Get a kid. Get another kid. For a large part of society this is still considered the Golden Formula of living ones life. Conflicts can occur on two levels: the goals that the group prescribes, and the means to reach those goals. In a society where be all you can be is the goal, the accepted means are get an education and earn a lot of money. If an individual is not fortunate enough to get an education due to economic circumstances, he still might go for the goal, but can substitute the means by robbing everyone blind.

If someone is tired of the same old goals of society, has the opinion that it only creates mindless power-driven individuals, he has also a deviance with what is regarded as normal. However, still trapped in the traditional meansof society he might still go on in the education-job-marriage-kid path. Typically one of the silent types.

If within a social group the emphasize is put on some one being different in their behavior, not following the norm of the society, this individual can be labeled as deviant. This labeling can be done in the form of drastic measures as putting in jail (which within my society is not a strange thing to do if someone is robbing everyone blind) or by means of communication with a group (did I say gossip?). Deviance within a group can lead to being labeled as such by the group. This labeling in itself would not be so bad, weren’t it for the fact that it can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Individuals being labeled as different can look at themselves in the same way and emphasize their label. In this way it becomes a reinforcing process. In the context of crime, by putting people in jail society emphasizes that they perform non-acceptable behavior and that they are bad persons. By being in jail the individual gets a self-image of being a bad person and keeps on behaving like one. If you put it like that, you just know this will trigger a lot of discussions.

Back to the topic of Project Management, there are project goals to fulfill and the project team gets means to its disposable to get reach those goals. But those means are not only just the money and people allocated to the project, but also the approach that is considered normal by the company or the profession group (think about the discussion between plan-driven and agile approaches). What this view teaches us is that if a team member is not following the normal path, look at its perception and attitude of the project goals and the means to reach those goals; chances are that there is something completely out of sync. And emphasizing this point (labeling) will only make matters worse.

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. - Deviant Behavior In Project Management is a post from: Project Shrink.

Turn on your television and try not to look at CSI Miami, NYC or Tonopah. It is amazing how popular crime series are, crime series where the geeks will save the day. It must be a universal thing, as the series are as popular in Europe as in The States. For me as a Project Manager it is a great inspiration. They find a dead corpse and an FBI Profiler is brought on the scene. He looks around, sniffs the air and creates a nice profile of the potential killer. Gut feeling, combined with a mix of experience and science transform a dark alley into a rich source of evidence.

When looking daily at the remains of my planning I feel like an FBI Profiler, or more appropriate, a Project Profiler. I look at the evidence and know the problem: death by control. Its liberating to feel like the lone, intelligent and, most of all, cool project profiler that collects evidence and clues, to build a case. Like at the FBI, based upon assumptions a profile is created. New information can lead to new assumptions and a new profile. But also the underlying assumptions steer the direction of the investigation, hoping to find evidence that support the probability of the profile. So, it is not just a matter of information gathering, and presto, you have a clear cut description of the problem. It is a lot of backward and forward reasoning. Based upon some first sparse info snippets assumptions are made, and as time progresses you get a cycle of “assumptions leading to the direction of investigation” and “information leading towards change in assumptions”.

The be able to create assumptions and being able to reason to what happens based upon those assumptions, you need theories, you need models. They provide us with a simplified version of reality which make it possible for us mortals to have a clue about what happens if we press button A or button B, take the blue or the red pill, scream loud or shut up. So, to be able to perform project profiling we need theories and models about project reality. And we need a lot of them. Project life can throw a zillion possible situations at us, and as models are by definitions simplifications, we need as much mental images as we possibly can come up with. If you have multiple models, chances that you have one that suites the situation are increasing dramatically.

If you are talking about “agile project managers”, this would be the key aspect of my definition. A project manager that has a lot of mental models about projects available, and can adopt his mindset according the situation without problems, is what I call a true “agile” PM. As with any social situation, a group of interacting stakeholders is a very complex system. You are never going to come up with one this-size-fits-all model that is usable. The only shot PMs have is being fluent in more than one mental model.

The nice thing about models is that you can create your own. It’s your head, make sure you are using it for your own ideas. I myself like the idea of using Google Earth, the application that lets you zoom in on the globe until you can see your own house. You can zoom in and out, and flip the globe as much as you want. By zooming you can determine your own level of abstraction. How much details do you want to see? How much of the geographical positions do you want to look at? Same with social models. Do you want to look at two people interacting or do you wish to focus on society as a whole? You are in charge of your own zoom-slider.

Models Effect Reality

No, I am not going to get all cosmic on you. No, I am not going to sell you that if you think long enough about becoming a weasel, you will become one (although I have seen some astonishing examples that support this). What I am going to tell you though that mindsets, models in your head, are a very powerful tool. Models really do affect reality in a sense that the effect the decisions and behavior of the people that hold them. A good example is the use of metaphors. When using metaphors you are taking the images of a different system, and use that to describe, to model the workings of the system at hand. A famous metaphor is that of a machine when looking at an organization (thanks to Taylor). Every employee is looked at as one of the many gears or bolt in the machinery. Talking about pure efficiency this is a powerful metaphor. However, adapting this mindset, means neglecting the individual character of every employee.

People can talk about projects as if they are conducting a war. They are using words like “marching orders” and “the troops”. If a Project Manager has a mindset like this, war as a metaphor, his mind is thinking in friends and foes, allies and enemies. You are either with him or against him. This view of the world will make it very difficult to collaborate with this person if you disagree. So, in the end, the war metaphor effects reality. If the model is powerful enough and wide spread among more people, the model will even become a reality. The project will end up as a war.

If models can have such an impact on the performance of reality, you almost have to be aware of the images that people try to fill in your head.

“In courses on corporate governance grounded in agency theory … we have taught our students that managers cannot be trusted to do their jobs -which, of course, is to maximize shareholder value- and that to overcome “agency problems,” managers’ interests and incentives must be aligned with those of the shareholders by, for example, making stock options a significant part of their pay. … Why then do we feel surprised by the fact that executives in Enron, Global Crossing, Tyco and scores of other companies granted themselves excessive stock options…?” [1]

Ghosal [1] in the same article sums it up pretty nicely:

“Unlike theories in the physical sciences, theories in social sciences tend to be self-fulfilling.”

Perhaps you are wondering at this moment why I am making such a fuzz about all this. Fair enough. I make the fuzz because I think it is a subject too much neglected in the discussions about the models and theories we as professionals use. And we should especially take care of the ones based upon some gloomy ideology. If you think that every one in the world is lying and cheating, this will of course influence your behavior. If in fact every person on the globe turns out to be a negative soul, your good. If it turns out that only a very few are bad persons, and the majority is all about love, peace and tenderness, you will run into a problem. You must be able to look at the underlying assumptions of the model, and the validity in the situation you are trying to filter through the model. Yes, I know, easier said then done. Although, you have no idea how few people are even aware of this principle.

The Three Lenses

To return the start of this article, in order to get to the source of human problems in his project, a PM has to be able to switch back and forth to several ways of looking at the same situation. There are tree lenses through which a project (as a group of interacting stakeholders) can be viewed:

1) The individual: in this view each person is regarded as a independent, rational entity, that will perform behavior that benefits him the most. Each individual selects the proper strategy based upon his personal aspects and inputs from the environment. This is the view of the world that is brought to us by behavioral psychology and economics.

2) Individual as member of social groups: each persons identity is created by his associations with different social groups, based upon his race, religion, occupation,hobbies . Each social group has its own rituals, laws, sense of common wisdom. Being part of a group, or a desired wish to belong to a certain group influences individual behavior. Sociology helped us creating this particular lens.

3) Interactions: instead of the individual members of the group, you can also focus on the interactions between the members. The flow of information, the flow and distribution of power, the structure of the task flows. The project is treated as a network. This view is based upon social networks, complex adaptive systems and general systems theory.

[1] Sumantra Ghosal, “Bad Management Theories Are Destroying Good Management Practices”, Academy of Management Learning & Education, 2005, Volume 4, No 1, 75-91

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. - Project Profiler: The True Agile Project Manager is a post from: Project Shrink.