The Business Sensei

It Takes a Process

Large projects can be very intimidating. It’s easy to feel like you are standing at the foot of a very tall and imposing mountain. Working on the project can easily overwhelm even very talented people. It can be hard to feel like you’re making progress when there’s always a lot to do and when it feels like problems are constantly cropping up. When you climb that mountain, it can often feel like there’s always fog ahead of you and behind you so that you can’t see how far you still have to go and you can’t tell how far you’ve come.

When I decided to write my first book, I didn’t jump in and start writing. Even though I’ve executed some very large projects, my first step was to learn a process for writing books. In this case, the process I used came from someone who had written over two dozen books, so I figured he had some clue what he was talking about. I subsequently modified the process by bringing in some of the lessons I’d learned from other complex projects and adjusting it to suit my personal style and to correct a few short-comings.

The trick with processes is that they serve to organize and simplify complex operations. They create structure. Writing a book is complex: there are a lot of moving parts. If nothing else, keeping track of the chapters, what’s ending up in each one, making sure there are no contradictions, that something mentioned in an earlier chapter is followed up on later, and so forth, can easily become nightmarish. However, using an organized system turns that nightmare into routine. Other projects have their own headaches that can by managed by having the right processes in place.

Processes, however, often feel awkward and alien when you’re first learning them. This is like the student in my jujitsu class who once said to me, “I’d never do that technique. It doesn’t feel natural.”

Of course it didn’t feel natural, he hadn’t practiced it! Processes are the same. They rarely feel natural at first. You have to get used to them. Processes also serve both logistical and psychological functions.

From a logistical perspective, a process serves as an organizational structure for projects that have a lot of moving parts. When designed well, the process captures the moving parts, or at least provides a way of making sure that they don’t get lost. Lost pieces of a project are a little like Roger Rabbit: just as he can escape from handcuffs only when it’s funny, lost pieces tend to show up only when it’s most inconvenient.

Psychologically, a good process protects us from having to spend our time and energy constantly wondering what we’re forgetting. This can be amazingly distracting. With a good process in place, even if some things still slip through the cracks, the frequency and severity of problems are minimized and are far less likely to derail the project. A process is, in essence, a way of breaking down a large project into goals and subgoals, while also providing a framework for keeping track of them all. This allows you to measure progress, making the whole project seem less intimidating. Put another way, you’ve at least cleared the fog from below, so you can see how far up the mountain you’ve climbed, and you have the tools to navigate the fog ahead of you.

Processes are not just about accomplishing large projects though. A good process can make it easier for new hires to become productive: for example, having a sales process helps new salesmen know what to say and how to demo the product. In this case, the process is serving to reduce confusion and provide structure to someone who is entering a new environment. By learning the process, they also learn what matters and what does not. Without a process, becoming productive is slower and involves a lot more wandering around in the fog.

Of course, no process is ever perfect. Once you’ve learned the process, you must modify it to fit you and to fix shortcomings. For team projects, part of how the team reaches its most productive stages is by figuring out how to modify the process so that it works for everyone on the team.

You wouldn’t climb a mountain without preparation. Tackling large projects without some sort of process is similarly unwise.

High Performance in a Day?

I was recently asked if it’s possible to get a team from just beginning to work together to high performance in a single afternoon.

There is a way to do it. The technique is very similar to how you train for a marathon in a single day.

The trick is in what you do to prepare for that one day.

If, for example, you’ve spent about six months running 3-4 times a week and doing other physical conditioning, then you’ll be ready for your one day. If, on the other hand, you haven’t been running or doing other physical exercise, that one day of marathon training might not work so well and you might not feel like moving for several days afterward.

Team building in a single day is much the same. It’s all a question of how you’ve prepared.

Most training exercises tell you where your team is at and show you how to move forward. Without the proper Read the rest of this entry »

Eye of the Hurricane

I was lying on my back. Standing around me were four people who, only two weeks before, had been teaching a class on appropriate emergency response in jujitsu.

The fact that I was flat on my back on the ground was not, in one sense, unusual. A friend of mine was taking his black belt exam and I had volunteered to let him demonstrate his throws on me. Things went slightly off the rails when he threw me, lost his balance, and ended up kicking me in the head.

The “thwock!” echoed through the gym.

One of the instructors was supposed to take charge. They stared down at me. I stared up at them. Eventually, I said, “Someone get me an ice pack.”

One of the men jumped slightly, turned, and ran out of the room. A moment later, he ran back in with one of those first aid kid chemical cold packs in his right hand.

“It’s not cold,” he yelled.

“You have to squeeze it,” came a voice from somewhere in the room.

In case you were ever curious, yes, it is possible to squeeze one of those cold packs too hard.

For such a small cold pack, the contents covered a remarkably large area.

I looked at my now soaking gi. I got to my feet.

“I’m fine now. Please don’t help me any more.”

Fortunately, in this situation, there was no permanent harm done and the fact that several people froze at the moment of crisis was merely embarrassing. My gi wasn’t even stained.

Unfortunately, many businesses are not so lucky. Even more unfortunately, it’s not the actual disasters that freeze them: handling the rare fire or power failure is barely a blip in the proverbial routine. Rather, the “disasters” that throw everything off balance and freeze decision making in its tracks are those that could have been anticipated or for which management thought that they had prepared.

Despite all their training, when the accident occurred, the four jujitsu instructors metaphorically lost their balance by focusing on the image of how bad it could be. That prevented them from acting immediately to determine how bad it actually was.

At Lacunae Software, the ship date was two days off when QA found a major bug in the software. Rather than stop, investigate the severity, and determine an appropriate course of action, the CEO announced that delaying the ship would clearly doom the company. He castigated QA for disloyalty and ordered the product to ship on schedule. Customers were not happy, costing the company more than the delay would have. Acting out of fear of how bad it could have been made the situation worse.

When things are going well and something suddenly goes wrong, it can be very easy to focus on all the potential negatives. That doesn’t help. Successful companies have the habit of focusing on what can go right. Developing that mindset takes practice:

Take a deep breathe and recognize that you have more time than you think. This is quite probably the hardest step.

• Remind yourself of the vision for your product and company (you do have a vision, right?).
• Review the steps necessary to manifest that vision. It can help to write them down as you go through them.
• List the things that can go right to move you forward from where you are. Be realistic, and also optimistic.
• Any time you find yourself focusing on what can go wrong, stop and shift back to what can go right. Evaluate the problems later.

Far too many companies never define their vision nor do they map out the path to success. The secret to success is staying on balance. The secret to not losing balance is knowing where you’re going, reminding yourself how you’ll get there, and focusing on the positive.