Public Workshops: Curriculum 
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Dear Fissure Friends, I always try to find a link between the articles included in the newsletter and something of "interest" going on in the world today. Being from Minnesota, I’m tempted to find a tie-in with the cruise scandal involving the Minnesota Vikings football team. But that ship has sailed, sunk and is best left where it is. I will however, share my solution for what I consider is one of the major problems with professional sports today. You can decide if the solution makes sense (and whether it would have prevented the Vikings cruise scandal) and if it could be applied to the business world as well. If your interested, click the link to "Jesse's Solution". Susan Heidorn, one of our guides and a current Ph.D. student was working on an article for this issue when her computer hard drive crashed and rather than wait for the return of her computer (there is a risk management learning here), I decided to fill in for her. I’m cheating a little, because I had committed to writing a blog article for Dick Richards’ web site on genius. So being a good project manager I saw an opportunity to turn a negative (missing Susan’s article) into a positive (using my article on genius for this newsletter). What Dick calls genius, others might call passion. He believes we all have a unique inner talent that when in alignment with what we are doing and how we are living, makes our world better. There is an interesting story behind how I identified my genius, and it is also a story of coincidence. Geof Lory deals with Consciousness and Courage this month. How does that relate to project management you ask? Control. Of course he uses his daughters and how they need less control as they mature to help us understand and relate to the topic. Our upcoming public workshops are in the left hand panel - our computer simulation based workshops are an effective and fun way to learn AND EARN PDUs. Make sure you also check out what’s happening at Fissure (Fissure News). Thanks for reading and have a great quarter, Jesse Freese Fissure, President Go with the Flow by Geof Lory Recently I was having lunch with a friend and fellow project manager and we talked about why people, ourselves included, don’t do the things we know need to be done on projects to make them successful, and why we do things we know should not be done. Many a retrospective (I prefer this term to "postmortem") has revealed opportunities for improvement that we vow to do on the next project but somehow forget during the next project. My friend speculated that the inevitable sense of urgency on almost all projects causes us to short-circuit the proven practices under the misconception that the time saved will get us closer to meeting the unmeetable schedule. While I believe that this false urgency and pressure to deliver something in unrealistic timeframes contributes to our irrational behavior, I also believe that our failure to behave as we know we should comes from two major internal areas of deficiency – Consciousness and Courage. I put these two together because I believe it is difficult to behave courageously, as opposed to fearlessly, without some level of consciousness. Hence the proverb, "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." In his seminal work, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey referred to the gap between stimulus and response as essential for choice and proactivity in one’s life. Consciousness is merely the acknowledgement that the gap exists at the time it exists and that we have choices. Unfortunately, this acknowledgement of choice seems to be either non-existent or too onerous for us to accept when the heat gets turned up on our projects. It is so much easier to throw up our hands in despair and absolve ourselves of blame. Whether or not we are to blame is not the issue; we are still responsible. So what to do? CIA – Control, Influence and Accept. As they get older, my teenage daughters Jenna and Erika become more involved with things outside the family and our immediate control. Learning to let go of the desire to Control, or delude ourselves that we are in control, is a discipline I am painfully developing. The girls are quickly becoming their own selves and it is a challenge for me to sit on the sidelines as they play their own game of life. When I was young, I vividly remember asking my father what I should do regarding a certain situation (I believe it was when I was making the decision as to which college to attend). My father calmly looked at me and asked, "If I give you my opinion, it is just that. You own the consequences of your decision." He clearly sent the signal that he had moved from a position of Control to one of Influence in our relationship. Many years later, I moved from the Detroit area to Minneapolis, 600 miles away from family and friends. Again I talked with my father about this decision before I moved. While he knew it would mean I would visit my mom and him only once or twice a year, he encouraged my adventurous spirit and accepted my decision. He gave his opinion consciously and courageously. My daughters are different from each other as well as from their stepmother and me. They sometimes choose to act differently than we would under the same circumstances. In this time of their transition to independence, remaining conscious about what we can still Control, what we can only Influence and what we need to Accept requires both Consciousness and Courage. My sister has two children, now adults, who have already gone through the teen stages. My sister and I share ideas around parenting. One is that it is our job as parents to work ourselves out of a job and into more of a peer relationship with our children. Relationships based on control require way too much effort and dramatically limit our choices. The same is true for project teams. Managing teams is less about control and more about influencing and often just accepting. Of course, the real test is when you can walk the talk. Here is where the Courage part comes in. It takes courage to give honest and compassionate feedback to team members. It takes courage to cancel projects that provide no reasonable return. It takes courage to give bad news to customers on the project status. If you are not going to be courageous don’t bother being conscious because it will probably just create guilt … not one of my favorite motivators. As Jenna and Erika enter their driving and dating years, my consciousness and courage will be tested. Some things I will continue to have control over, but the balance is increasingly shifting to more influence and sometimes acceptance. My hope is that, like most project teams I work with, my daughters are full of potential and will only need periodic doses of consciousness and courage to guide them through these challenging years. Letting go and trusting in them while also providing guidance requires continual consciousness followed by deliberate courage. So the next time you know what you need to do to help your team (or your children) but you don’t immediately do it, ask yourself these questions: If you can stop to ask these questions you will be demonstrating Consciousness. If you answer them honestly and act on them accordingly, you will be demonstrating Courage and your teams -- and you -- will be better for it. When you think about it, what do you have to lose? [This article is fifth in a series. Premium members can review the previous articles – Just Do It!, A Man with a Plan, Conscious Parenting Mindset, and Are We There Yet? in our column archives.. –Ed.] My Genius Story by Jesse Freese My journey in finding my genius is an interesting story that also is about coincidence. The story begins in St. Paul, MN, in 1994. I had just finished a very nice dinner with my wife, Sue, and two of our good friends, Ed and Barbara Tilford. Ed and Barbara were also my partners in Fissure, our training and development company. Ed is my mentor and had been my boss off and on for most of 17 years in our previous life as managers with Sperry/Unisys. As we left the restaurant Ed, Barbara and Sue were drawn immediately to the book store across the street. All three were regular book readers and quickly decided to walk off a little dinner and cruise the bookstore for a few books to take home and read. I read books, but not on a regular basis, and when I did pick up a book, it was usually a "business" book that was either recommended by Ed or someone else I respected. Needless to say, Sue was always encouraging me to pick a book for fun, but I was drawn to the business book isle regardless. I looked at my list of recommended books that I kept in my wallet (yes – I’m one of those people) and began to look for one among the titles on the shelf. That is when I came across a book with a very intriguing title that I just couldn’t resist picking off the shelf. It was called "Artful Work". I looked it over and was immediately hooked on the idea of "genius". I showed it to Ed, thinking he would feel the same way, but he had already selected one or two books and didn’t seem interested in "Artful Work". After agonizing for a few minutes, I bought the book and read it in a few days time. The concept of genius made sense to me and I began thinking about how comfortable I felt providing project management and leadership training to our corporate clients and believing I was "doing" work that must be closely aligned with my genius. We belonged to a network of trainers that got together every nine months and at the beginning of each meeting, everyone always shared something that was important to them. Many shared books they had read and how the books had impacted them. I rarely shared a book, but at this meeting I couldn’t wait to share "Artful Work". I knew it resonated with at least a few people and went home satisfied that some might even buy and read the book. A few months later, George Davis, who organized the meetings called to say he had not only read the book, but was so interested in this concept of genius that he had actually contacted the author. It turned out that Dick Richards would not only be at our next meeting, but he would be there a few days before to conduct a genius finding workshop for those who were interested. I didn’t hesitate to sign up. In preparation for the workshop I decided to read Artful Work again and spent some time thinking about what my genius might be. It was also during this second reading that I was reminded that Dick Richards was from Philadelphia at one time and being a Philadelphian myself, I was really looking forward to meeting him. I arrived for the genius workshop early wearing my beloved red Phillies cap. I introduced myself to Dick and it didn’t take long before our conversation turned to Philadelphia and specifics about where we had spent time there. After sharing that I had grown up in Lansdale, a suburb of Philly, Dick asked the name of my high school and the year I had graduated. In one of those weird cases of coincidence, Dick had worked as a guidance counselor at my high school during my junior and senior years. He asked me my name again, and upon restating it he asked me if I had a brother. You see, Dick was the counselor for the "challenging" students, and while I had managed to stay out of his office, my brother, Donald, had spent many a session with Dick. We had a good time catching up and I had one of the most powerful two days of my life finding my genius with about eight close colleagues and friends. Dick created clarity for us as we worked through the exercises identifying clues to our geniuses. With each exercise I came closer to my genius. Toward the end of the second day I said it, but I knew this was important to get right and I wanted to leave "it" open in case I was wrong. I left the meeting feeling fairly confident about my genius, but today I’m even more confident in "guiding safe passage". If you want to know more about genius, check out Dick's site: http://www.theclearspace.com or contact me at Fissure. Jesse Freese Fissure Jesse_Freese@Fissure.com Fissure News - October 2005 PMI MN awarded long time Fissure associate Mike Wold the prestigious W. Bruce Sandison Presidents Award. The award is presented yearly to a member not presently serving on the chapter board, who has shown unparallel devotion of their time in quality efforts building professionalism in project management, both inside and outside the PMI organization. Congratulations Mike, thank you for all you do!! Seattle WA, Central IL & Sioux Falls S.D. will be joining the ranks of Chicago, Raleigh & Minneapolis as sites for Fissure public classes in 2006. The new locations will offer our Basic and Advanced Project Management Simulation Workshops and our Project Management Professional (PMP) Prep course. Keep an eye on our web site for the upcoming schedules for these new locations. Universities are requesting Fissure Simulations to add to their existing courseware. A number of colleges including The Citadel, Brigham Young & George Mason University have requested information on how they can use the simple Fissure project management simulation as part of their curriculum. Our simple project management simulation is a shorter and less complex version then the ones used in our workshops. The professors are very interested in giving their students hands on experiences that reflect a "real world" application of their studies. A Joint certification program between a major university and Fissure has been under construction for a little over a year. The new partnership should be announced before the end of 2005. Jesse's Solution The professional sports industry (owners, unions, sports agents, and media) has turned the focus on "team" into a focus on the individual. Look at how they are rewarded. The individual rewards are tied (for the most part) to individual performance. And the contracts are written based on expected individual performance (1 to 10 year contracts) versus actual individual performance (what happened this season). There is no real $ motivation for team performance. My solution – All the money generated by every team in the league goes into one large pot (including TV, radio, venue and endorsement revenue). Fixed percentages are given to each team based on how they finished in the final standings. The top team gets the most, the worst team gets the least. Each team will have the same fixed percentages for operations and players/coaches. At the end of the season the money is put on a table in the locker room and the coaches and players work out how much each person gets as a team. I can guarantee that the quarterback won’t take that much more than the offensive linemen who have protected him so well all year long. The superstar who gets hurt early in the season and doesn’t play won’t take any more than their backup who came in and contributed to the success of the team. Drafted players would have to prove themselves on the field, and would only leave the team if "released" by the team (coaches included). I also believe individuals would be less likely to participate in personal actions that could potentially harm the team’s ability to perform. And if they did do something to harm the team they would feel the hurt in terms of their reward at the end of the season. They could even be released with no guarantee of being picked up by another team. What team is going to take a chance on a player released by their teammates? I think there is a similar challenge in most companies. How does the CEO justify taking 10000 or even 1000 times more money than the lowest paid worker at the end of the year? Is that teamwork? Jesse Freese Fissure |
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Project Management Institute and Leadership Skills Training by Fissure. 12940 Harriet Ave South Suite #250 Burnsville, MN 55337 phone 952.882.0800 toll free 877.877.6333 fax 952.882.9067 © Copyright 2007 Fissure, All Rights Reserved. |
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