Murder by Numbers

The day before we disembarked from our ship, the cruise director emphasized just how important it is to complete our passenger questionnaires. Apparently, the cruise line's management places a great deal of weight on passengers' responses. Bonuses are decided. Promotions are offered. Staff is terminated. This cruise director even directed us to rate a feature as Exceeded Expectations when it didn't necessarily. After all, "the numeric rating for Exceeded Expectations is the range 100-75. A score of 75 translates to a grade of C in school. That doesn't seem right." The cruise director's ten-minute monologue was followed up by the same message supplied by the maitre d' after dinner.

I once worked for a company that placed a lot of emphasis on project scorecard ratings. Our San Francisco office always received 100% ratings. When our General Manager investigated this apparent success, clients revealed that the San Francisco Practice Manager was strong-arming the results. If ratings were anything below 100%, the Practice Manager would visit the client and talk the client into 100% scores. Unfortunately, metrics-based performance measures revealed little about the San Francisco office's performance and tended to sour business relationships with its clients.

I am all about performance measures. I believe in the ideal, that which is measured, improves. Gleb Reys' Personal Development blog provides some examples for those who would like to see this in action. However, basing performance solely on customer reviews can negate the customer experience. There must be a balance in the organization among customer/client feedback and other performance attributes. Have you ever seen the proper balance? If so, what does it look like?

Greatest Importance for Success

Lewis and Clark knew management. One important management principle shows up in the correspondence between Lewis and Clark as far back as 1803. American readers will remember that Lewis and Clark, with a group of frontiersmen, set out to find a water passage from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. The timing of the Louisiana Purchase (1803) and the Lewis and Clark expedition (1804-1806) seems as though President Jefferson was telling the men, “We just bought a huge chunk of land. Now go see what we just purchased.” In reality, Thomas Jefferson had pursued several ideas for western exploration years before the purchase was made.

In preparation for the trip, Lewis and Clark exchanged a series of letters regarding expedition objectives, needs, and timeframes. In one such letter, Clark shares "a judicious choice of our party is of the greatest importance to the success of this vast enterprise." Lewis responded in agreement.

Selection of staff is of “greatest importance?” Do you hold such beliefs? If you do agree with Clark, do you act on those beliefs? I have oftentimes been encouraged to make a job offer to a candidate after a single interview. Ideally, I would like to meet the candidate on two or three occasions. If I must spend the next few years working with a person, I want to make sure I know that person before he or she is invited in the door.

If your experience has been like mine, your most frustrating problems are related to people? When I think of my best projects, it is always the projects where I was able to work with good people.

How important is selecting the right people? Were Lewis and Clark off course on this one?

Sacred PM Practices – Dedication of Staff

It looks like one key to success is to have a dedicated project team. The term dedicated means that the project team members are not expected to split their time between projects. The pie chart below should serve as a healthy argument for acquiring dedicated resources.

Observations

• Eighty-four percent of the projects indicated that the core staff of the team was 100% dedicated


• Only 16% of the successful projects reported a problem with insufficient resources

I have found a dedicated project team to be a luxury. How many times have you worked on only one project at a time? I have never worked for a large company where matrix management is not the norm. Lost in Matrix Management points us to many of the problems of this type of organizational structure.

Have you ever seen a large project succeed without dedicated team members? Perhaps sharing the time of team members is fine as long as their work is not on the schedule's critical path.

(For information about Sacred PM Practices, see the posting on Jan 25, 2009)