posted on August 25, 2013 by
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The 5 most common misunderstandings (Part 3)

In a survey of communication problems across 34 Engineering and IT projects the following five categories accounted for practically all of the communication breakdowns and confusions that affected project delivery schedules or costs.   Do any of these sound familiar from your experience?

  • Assurances Problems
  • Meanings of Goals Poorly Defined
  • Hidden Information
  • Micro Management / Under Feedback
  • Why don’t they care like I do?

In the last post we learned about two questions that can help you get various stakeholders to shared consensus about goals.  If you have actually practiced them you probably are beginning to recognize how to improve the quality of information between team members, suppliers, and customers.

In this post we will dive deeper into hidden information and how people’s personal egos sometimes create issues that can spiral out of control.  Now we look at what happens when you don’t have the lay of all the land and are building your map from scratch.

Number 3.  Unclear Starting Point    

Sometimes people may be unclear or “in denial” about the “current state” they are starting from.  They don’t like to admit it, of course.  But it is not uncommon for teams that have been working together for some time to have topics they have tacitly agreed NOT to talk about.  Often this takes the form of, “If you won’t point out these vulnerabilities, I won’t mention your flaws.”

This means that during the analysis and requirements phase of any project, it is important to politely but firmly dig deep into the assumptions that are not necessarily being put on the table, while simultaneously being sensitive to the need for parties to save face.

Recommended Solutions:  Use deep rapport and observation skills to make sure people feel comfortable when asking questions about these ego sensitive topics.  Also, it can help to ask these questions in private or at least with sensitivity to who might lose face. This is crucial.  If you embarrass some team member it will be difficult to regain rapport, trust, and cooperation with them.

Listening for Universal  words like “Always” and “Never,”  and phrases that imply “...this is just the way we do (or always have done) it around here,” are easy cues that should be gently challenged.  Words like “can’t,” “don’t,” “must” and “have to” also are cues that imply rules or standards are at work that may not be explicitly in shared understanding.

Sensitively asking a question like,

  • “I’m curious, what is the underlying intention behind that rule?” or
  • “I’m confused, what would be the consequence if we decided we need to change that standard?,”

often provides an inroad to understanding the hidden agenda or missing data that tend to derail results at a later point in a project.

If you don’t already have great people skills in sensitive situations like these, you can learn more about Rapport and Observation Skills from Technical Leadership Skills course – Authentic Leadership Transition.

Also, notice that at the beginning of these two additional questions there are short phrases like “I’m curious,” and “I’m confused” that are placed there because they tend to make the question that follows sound softer.  In fact, we call these types of phrases, “softeners.”  You don’t want to come off as challenging the other person’s ego, so use these softener before questions so that you don’t sound like you are interrogating them.  Other softener phrases might include:  “I am wondering…” and “could you tell me please…”

If you will add these two questions to the two you learned last time and find a way to practice them you will be rewarded when the come naturally to you at the time that you most need them.

Next time, in Part 4 of this series, we will explore how the leadership errors of over and under managing often arises out of the communication problem of not distinguishing cleanly between “processes” and “things.”   Once you get the hang of applying this idea appropriately you will be able to fit your leadership style to match the needs of your staff and peers (and even management).

 

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posted on August 18, 2013 by
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The 5 most common misunderstandings (Part 2)

In a survey of communication problems across 34 Engineering and IT projects the following five categories accounted for practically all of the communication breakdowns and confusions that affected project delivery schedules or costs.   Do any of these sound familiar from your experience?

  • Assurances Problems
  • Meanings of Goals Poorly Defined
  • Hidden Information
  • Micro Management / Under Feedback
  • Why don’t they care like I do?

In the last post we looked at the importance of getting clear about over promises up front.  It is so important to get in the habit of delivering on what you say you will deliver.

In this post we will look more deeply into Goals and the meanings people make up about them when they are poorly defined.  In each future post we will take on another of these five types of mistakes that create so much havoc.

Although they may sound common sense, mastering each of these will solve the majority of misconceptions, miscommunications, and costly problems that Engineering, Science and Technical Leaders must deal with.  There is no substitute for quality communication and shared understanding to accomplish and succeed where others fail.

Number 4:  Goal Definition Misperceived

Team members (customers and development, suppliers and production) don’t have a shared understanding for goal they are trying to accomplish or create.  It causes a lot of stress if you have rugby players on a soccer field and the customer thinks they paid for an American football game.

Recommended Solution:  The effectiveness of communication is proportional to how “grounded” in tangible, shared reality you can make it.  Models, mock ups, and prototypes help customers to visualize whether you have understood what they are requiring.   But many times the problem is created by talking abstractly about the future goal.

Listening for abstract and intangible descriptions and asking the questions to specify any fuzzy details can make a huge difference.  Try asking,

  • “How specifically do we see that going?”  and
  • “What specifically do you mean by…?“

These two questions, and variants similar to them, are the ones that superior Engineers and their leaders seem to use a lot to drive down to the important details.

Practice intentionally over-using these for a week and you will begin to see the advantages in tangible clarity.

 

Next time we will look at how and why hidden agenda and people’s ability to fool themselves gets in the way of success, along with what you can do to deal with it.  Until then figure out how you are going to practice these seemingly simple questions each day.

 

 

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posted on August 11, 2013 by
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The 5 most common misunderstandings

…or how I learned to Finesse Language on Engineering Projects to get things done.

In a survey of communication problems across 34 Engineering and IT projects the following five categories accounted for practically all of the communication breakdowns and confusions that affected project delivery schedules or costs.   Do any of these sound familiar from your experience?

  • Assurances Problems
  • Meanings of Goals Poorly Defined
  • Hidden Information
  • Micro Management / Under Feedback
  • Why don’t they care like I do?

Over the next few posts we will look at each of these in reverse order, from least common to most, and suggest actions you can take to avoid these problems on your watch.   Let’s start with the fifth most common behavior that creates business problems.

Number 5:   Assurances given without understanding what they actually mean or entail.  

This most often happens because the team  or sales person, or executive feels they have to “look good” in order to “close” an agreement.  This is the classic “over promising and then under delivering.”

Recommended Solution:   When the other party hints there is going to be a challenge or that they are concerned about a particular problem, believe them!

Don’t claim to be the greatest thing since sliced bread.  Dig in and find out what they might know that you don’t.  And don’t let egos pretend that you can solve issues that the other party has not been able to solve just to get the deal going.

I suppose that there is always hope you will be able to juggle more of the “devil in the details” than they could.  You may be more skilled, knowledgeable, and able to deal with more stress so that you can “fake it till you make it,” but if you aren’t experienced enough to find out up front what those concerns are about in detail, then probably not.

Taking responsibility is a must.  Without taking responsibility, we will never learn because we never admit that there is something to learn.

If you are the technical lead find a way to level with everybody and call out differences of understanding above the table.  Refuse to take responsibility for a project if you are forced to pretend that you know something that you do not.

It is better to do what you have to do now than to get caught in the trap the comes from feigning understanding.  People may argue with you now, but they will definitely remember your ineptitude if you don’t keep to your standards and things go South later.

Next time we will look at how to get everyone singing out of the same songbook when it comes to goals.

 

 

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posted on July 30, 2013 by
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Where to Start When Your Leadership Stumbles

“To Get Where You Want to Go, We Always Begin by Recognizing Where You Currently Are“

 

One marketing division of an international pharmaceutical company that I worked with, “off-shored” the development and maintenance of their marketing relationship database to India.  The requirements were shared, but they were not tied to specific test plans.

When the multimillion dollar system was delivered, independent verification from the company’s distributors, who would be the users in the field, indicated that the system “worked as designed” but that the design was not practical or useable in their day-to-day operations.   The project was mothballed without final implementation.

Have you seen a project that turned into a learning opportunity  like this before?

Poor leadership is the most common reason for major business mistakes like this.  There is always a specific individual who is responsible for the Leadership of the team, so even little communication breakdowns point back to poor leadership skills.

Leadership comes down to standards, values, negotiation rituals, goals, and human beings.

 

YOUR PURPOSE AS A LEADER 
Your purpose as a leader is to coordinate the interactions and efforts of a group of people to achieve valuable results that the individual persons who make up that team could not achieve by themselves.

Each individual offers their unique skills.  But to create a synergistic effect that generates valuable results in an efficient manner requires your serious coordination.

You put the goals and standards you negotiate or dictate to your team in place to constrain team behaviors so that results are measurable and therefore manageable.

The rituals you establish with your team will determine your effectiveness as a unit in the larger organization.

The way you treat your people will determine whether your team will find their work meaningful, useful, and fulfilling, so that they will become delightfully engaged and give you more of their best.  Or whether they will obligingly provide only the minimum necessary to get by and reserve their best ideas and effort for after work.

 

PRAGMATIC SHORT EXERCISE FOR LEARNING
Consider taking five minutes right now to write down what you consider to be your team’s:

  • members
  • values
  • goals
  • standards of practice
  • key processes
  • key measurements

When you put these down on paper (or the computer), you will find that more details will come to you than if you only did this exercise mentally.   These emergent details are the “little devils” that you will want exorcise or negotiate with to resolve the issues you’re facing.

That is why a leader needs to take a step back and clarify his or her thinking on a regular basis.  It is the leader’s job to understand the overall  team scope, boundaries, and interfaces within the larger system that is your parent organization.  But your range of influence is primarily within the details of your teams specific processes and procedures.  As Marshal McLuhan said, Leaders must learn to

“think globally, and act locally.”

Let me know what you are thinking in the comments discussion (see the green tag), or to engage me directly, give me a call.

Keith W Fail
512-507-5464

 

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