Admiral Thad Allen on leadership

In the November 2010 issue of the Harvard Business Review, there is an interview with Admiral Thad Allen, the recently retired Coast Guard commandant and the "National Incident Commander" for the Gulf oil spill.

Entitled "You have to lead from everywhere", it's a good read for those interested in how an experienced manager with a proven track record approaches different situations under different degrees of urgency and stress.

Interviewer Scott Berinato took the title from a reply Allen made to the question: "In a major crises...do you think it's more important to lead from the front or from the back?", to which Allen replied: "You have to lead from everywhere".

Mental models
Here's the point that struck me: Allen says he approaches every assignment with a number of different mental models of how command might be exercised....Allen is an admirer of Peter Senge, noted MIT advocate of mental models....and may change models as events unfold.  In many situations he has faced, he states that the chain of command model simply doesn't exist!

OMG! No chain of command?!

What he's saying is that in some situations there is no single manager is in charge.

OMG! No one in charge?!

But, Allen can work this way and make it effective. He calls for "unity of effort" rather than "unity of command"

Unity of Effort vs Unity of Command
Allen makes a very interesting distinction in those cases where the organizational model simply does not converge....parallel lines rather than a pyramid, or multiple pyramids with a loosely layered level of federation and coordination:

In what I would call a “whole of government response”—to a hurricane, an oil spill, no matter what it is—that chain of command doesn’t exist. You have to aggregate everybody’s capabilities to achieve a single purpose, taking into account the fact that they have distinct authorities and responsibilities. That’s creating unity of effort rather than unity of command, and it’s a much more complex management challenge.

Admiral Thad Allen, USCG [Retired]

Program management lesson
So, what's the program management lesson here? Well, of course, the lesson is right in the word 'program' that implies multiple projects ostensibly working toward a common objective.

And, of course, the objective may change, forced by unforeseen events.

And if some of the effort is in the government, and some is in contractors and NGO's, and even within the government there are state and federal, or USA and ROW, there's a lot to be learned by studying the methods Allen has championed.

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It's cultural!

A recent student of mine in risk management had this to say about risk management as a contractor working abroad:

....the most challenging factor is the cultural:
- Locals do not value risk management at the same level.
- Regulations are more flexible and international standards are not necessarily enforced\followed
- Stakeholders tendency to be more risk-takers.
- Misunderstanding of the role of Risk Management across the projects and its benefits

Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon refrain. In fact, the tension between stakeholders and the project team arises from different biases, different anchor points, and different metrics to which they are held accountable.

As a general rule, my observation is that stakeholders tend to underestimate project risks...thinking there is enough time for things to work out...and PM's overestimate risks....too much knowledge about too many things that all seem to add coherently rather than randomly

If you've read my posts on "the project balance sheet", you'll understand where I'm coming from

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Wanna be a PM?

I had a recent post on attributes to look for in a Project Executive. Now comes Mike Clayton with a nice list of 15 ideas about "how do I become a project manager?"

I like the list because for the most part it's all about taking personal initiative to get involved, get informed, and get educated.

I particularly like the first idea:

Seize opportunities – any opportunities. Take any chance you can to get involved in a project and then look for a chance to take more responsibility

There are 14 more where this came from. Give it a read.

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To get and to give

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give

Winston Churchill

It's extraordinary to learn how many projects and project managers are engaged in public service and voluntary efforts, lending the project skills they "get" from their paid work to effort they "give" away.

It's been recently estimated that more than 63 million Americans are actively engaged in volunteer work...that's a blessing of our demographic metric of 330M citizens...and a fair number of them are engaged in real projects....as different from day-to-day volunteer operations. And the projects are everything from building houses to putting in water systems to putting up food banks.

If you're looking for a "life", volunteering your PM skills may be the way!

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John Marshall?

Well, John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it

POTUS Andrew Jackson, 1832

What, might you ask, does a dispute between Georgia, the Cherokee Indians, and the Chief Justice Marshall have to do with project management?

It's a matter of federalism: is the PM--as the central authority--still relevant?

YES! Read on...

Jackson was an union agilist....at least when he took office. POTUS Jackson originally thought Marshall's reasoning was wrong and the states should be able to decide for themselves which federal statutes to follow, but within a few months Jackson reversed himself.

In the project context, this comes to the fore when agile methods are introduced that challenge the role of the PM [playing the part of USA] and agile teams [playing the part of states].

And, the question at hand is: What decisions and directions of the PM--specifically those for which the authorities are not enumerated in the project charter--are to be followed by the teams, and by what means does the PM 'enforce' decisions?

Even if you diss the conventional 'command and control' ideas of the PMBOK, unless you are a one-team project, all teams are--or should be--'federated' under the leadership of the PM.

The PM has the responsibility--and retains the responsibility--to set standards, values, and doctrine; to establish strategic direction; and to evaluate and give credit for earned value, leaving tactics to the agile teams.

Indeed, the strategic-tactical tension is the strength of agile methods: those who are closest to the problem devine and execute the means to do things; but those closest to the intent of the enterprise set the strategy and the standards, and evaluate progress.  When things go off track, it's the PM that directs recovery.

Works for me!

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Quotation to remember

Campaign with poetry; govern with prose

Attributed to Mario Cuomo, New York

In our world, evangelizing the wonders of the project and waxing eloquent about its advantages and disadvantages is the poetry of the visionary.

Project managers grind it out with 'prose': the day to day plans, documents, and metrics of management!

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Nash Equilibrium Part II

Here we are back with Mr John Nash and his equilibrium, called conveniently enough: the "Nash Equilibrium".  If you missed Part I, you can get it here.

Today, we take a look at what Alan Blinder did to move it along. Our spin is on project management, different from what Nash and Blinder used as the context, but nevertheless, the Nash Equilibrium shows up in project situations more often than we might imagine.

Equilibrium refers to the idea that the game ends with everyone winning something, or no one losing everything. In other words, a state of balance exists between the parties when the game ends. Thus, equilibrium applies to non-zero-sum outcomes.

Just to review:
Just to review Part I of this series: the Nash Equilibrium comes out of 'game theory' that is itself a study of how wary adversaries interact....most often in non-zero-sum situations in which they find themselves mutually involved. It is presumed that there is a sequence of moves by the parties in accordance with some protocol.

Game theory is somewhat related to the more familiar 'utility theory' that describes how one or more persons' attitude is affected by the persons' relationship to [an inanimate] condition, risk, or event.

The Blinder Matrix
Here's what Blinder gave us in the so-called 'payoff' matrix or the "Blinder Matrix":

The setup: Two parties face a situation. A resolution is needed. Each makes decisions independently. Each has similar tools and capabilities and preferences for an outcome, but they weigh each differently. What's most important to one is not so important to the other. And each has a pretty good idea of the other's priorities, tools, and capabilities.

Project Game
For the project game, let's assume that both cost and time are of importance to both the project team and to the stakeholder community, but each sets a different priority.  We'll assume scope is constant.  In the first figure below, we see a partially completed "Blinder Matrix".  Stakeholder preferences are in the upper side triangle of each square.  You can see that there are four combinations of two preferences between two parties.

"cost/cost; cost/time; time/cost; and time/time"

We see that the stakeholders most favored preference is time and it is given the number 1 to indicate it's first rank.  Cost is the least favored preference by the stakeholders [after all, project cost usually doesn't show up on stakeholder P&L].

Now, let's fill in the project preferences. In this 'game', project preferences are opposite the stakeholders; the PM values cost first.

Play the game
So, with the preferences established, let's play the game. Each party knows the other's preferences and thinks they know the other's strategy to react to the other's move. Each party is independent; each party is not looking for an optimum solution; they are looking for a stable solution that they can both live with.

The next figure shows the strategy reactions by preference. For example, the upper right square, time/cost, is second rank for project after its first ranked preference time/time because at least the project is still focused on time. The project's third ranked preference is cost/time; the time 'agenda' is shifted to the stakeholder but that's better for the project than cost/cost that has no time preference.

Game moves
Let's say the stakeholder decides to make the first move: if the stakeholder chooses Time as their first move, then the project is not going to respond with time since a time/time situation ranks 4 for the PM; if the stakeholders goes with Cost, then the project will jump on that and the upper square situation will result with everyone lined up on cost; this ranks 4 with the stakeholders so stakeholders won't start with cost.

Now, here's the equilibrium: there's no way to reach the upper right square with the stakeholder making the first move with Time.  The stakeholder will go first with their higher preference, Time, along the lower row. If PM responds with time, then the game is an unstable 1/4 state; but we expect    the PM will respond with their higher preference, Cost, and the game equalizes on the time/cost 3/3 square in the lower left, which is 3rd preference--a clear sub-optimization--but nevertheless stable!

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