Interesting talk from Noreena Hertz on the dangers of trusting experts, and the implications for how our brains work and decision making. When I watch the video I think of the estimation processes for projects and how they are likely subject to the same errors and biases.
Posted in risk management, video
Advertising briefs are a specific type of project with three characteristics:
1. Extreme creativity. The goal with any advertising work is to come up with something sufficiently original to break through all the clutter.
2. Reliance on client management. It is not enough to merely come up with a great ad, but to make sure the client believes in it too.
3. Ongoing iteration. This reflects the creative process where the goal is to sift through ideas to find the highest quality solution before the deadline.
The Creative Process Illustrated by Glenn Griffin and Deborah Morrison, interview leading advertising executives to learn more about their processes. From these interviews a few insights emerge. The best advertisers start by questioning the client’s brief, and working with the client as soon as possible.
“most creative briefs cannot lead to good advertising unless they are developed with input from creatives”
Then the process of creativity has two important aspects. The first is to collect a large number of ideas.
“It’s like the old story about cows that are let out of the barn. The ones that stop at the first grass they come to end up chewing bits of weeds and muddy tufts. The more adventurous cows who make it through the first (or second) pastures find the good, deep, tasty stuff. Just don’t go too far and become roadkill.”
The second is to consume more than you create. Nothing is ever really a bolt from the blue, it more likely combines existing ideas in a new way. The more content you consume, whether through books, blogs or museums, the more ideas you’ll be able to combine into original concepts.
As a project manager, examination of advertising projects is a healthy reminder on the importance of ongoing client engagement and that creativity comes from ‘combining’ a large number of existing ideas and finessing the good ones, rather than any sort of truly unique gift.
From Jason Fried’s article in Inc some interesting suggestions on dealing with “conflict” or more generally situations where people can’t agree.
Consider trading the decision. If it’s relatively small, consider saying “Ok you win this time, but I’ll take the next decision.”
Determine who wants it more. Let the person with greater passion behind their view take the decision. This is the difference between counting votes and weighing them.
Clearly, for larger decisions these tactics risk worsening the outcome, but for smaller issues, these aren’t bad approaches to finding consensus quickly.
For such a complex process, change management can be modeled mathematically using basic and remarkably simple assumptions, or rules. The Nobel prize winner, Thomas Schelling as done so.
The sequence below shows segregation occurring where each red and blue dot is a “person” and they each want to live next to at least 2 neighboring dots of the same color out of their 4 total neighbors, the result of the simple and apparently moderate rule is total segregation after a period of time. What’s fascinating is that an apparently minor rule or constraint leads to this level of change.
Number of neighbors that need to be of the same color:
Fine. So what does this mean for change management? The lesson is that very small changes in people’s behaviors and preferences can drive enormous differences in outcome.
You can see the animated sequence here (note: if it doesn’t work you need to have Quicktime installed.)
<start>
<end>
See the full article from Atlantic Magazine here.
The winner’s curse comes out of economic theory, but is very relevant to any project manager outsourcing work to vendors.
Essentially if you are bidding out work where:
Then there’s a good chance the vendor you pick won’t make any money out of the contract. This is because if the cost of the work is uncertain, all vendors are essentially guessing at the cost, and that’s fine. The problem is that in picking the cheapest vendor you are choosing the one who’s guessed lowest. However, based on the wisdom of crowds the most likely actual cost of the work is the average of all the bids you’ve received, but you’re not paying the average, you’re paying the lowest and the problem there is that the vendor is likely to lose money (the difference between the average of all bids and their bid),
Now, on the face of it that might sound like a good thing, but in practice, if you look at the delays that results on the Wembley Stadium project and Scottish Parliament project look can see that having a vendor who’s not making money working for you can cause problems for the overall project. It’s important to note that this outcome is a result of the structure of the bidding process, and is not because anyone is necessarily trying to rig the bidding.
So, how can this be solved, here are a few ideas (and thanks to the audience at a presentation I gave in Vancouver last year for helping out with these)
1. Declare in advance you will pick the second lowest bidder. This removes the incentive to come as the lowest and win the bid.
2. Ask for a detailed proposal, not just a price. Read the detailed proposals first, pick the best, then look at the price and see if your budget can cover it. If not, either move to the next best proposal, or ask for more funding.
The Dead Hand is a wonderful historical narrative of the weapons of the Cold War and the negotiations to limit them. The term Dead Hand comes from the Soviet system to potentially automatically launch nuclear weapons in the event of attack. The book covers biological, nuclear and chemical weapons and is most interesting aspect is peeling back the layers of the Cold War negotiations, especially between Reagan and Gorbachev, demonstrating each sides’ perception of the other and what the reality was. The result is very interesting, showing how hard it is to read a negotiating partner accurately and how your own side’s actions and perspectives inevitably color your judgment. Recommended for anyone with an interest in recent history, though learning more about these weapons will likely result in you feeling worse rather than better about them.
Similar to last year, below are the top 5 books I’ve enjoyed most this year. They don’t have much to do with project management, but perhaps that’s a good thing.
Matterhorn/What Is It Like To Go To War – Karl Marlantes is doesn’t pull any punches as a writer. He was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford when he volunteered to go to Vietnam and his two books are essentially different reflections on the same experience. Matterhorn is a hands on book about war in Vietnam, fictional, but obviously drawing on deep personal experiences. What Is It Like To Go To War is part autobiography, part sermon on the same topic, recounting Marlantes’ experiences with brutal honesty (including cowardice, mistakes and prostitution) and once again given a vivid picture of Vietnam whilst also stating his own views on what war does to people and what society should do about it.
Decoded – I wouldn’t have thought I would enjoy Jay-Z’s autobiography nearly as much as I did, his life from dealing to fame is a great story, and he explains the lyrics of his songs in detail, decoding the slang and the meaning behind the lyrics.
In The Garden of Bests: Love, Terror and An American Family In Hilter’s Berlin – A well researched book with a sprinkling of fiction to chart the course of a university professor who President Roosevelt appointed as ambassador to Berlin just as Hitler was on the rise. It makes history real, and clearly shows that evil is not quite as black and white as it appeared in retrospect and how mixed the world’s reaction to it was, at least initially.
Scalper: Inside The World Of A Professional Ticket Tout – This is Kindle only, and part of Amazon’s effort to release shorter books on the platform for $1.99. This is a quick read on the practice of reselling tickets to sporting events told by a former tout. It goes deep into a subject you may not have thought much about and is short enough to retain interest in what is a fairly esoteric topic.
The Hunger Games Series – If you liked the Stig Larsson (Girl Who Played With Fire) series, you might enjoy this too. Like that series it’s coming out as a movie and is easy, but gripping reading. The first book is the best of the trilogy, and the ultimately ending is underwhelming, rushed and bizarre, but it’s a great story up to that point.
Posted in book review, off topic
Tagged book review, books of the year 2011, marlantes
3 minute video based on interviewing 500 successful people on what made them successful.
Now, to be truly scientific, Richard St John would have needed to pick a control group of less successful people to make sure they don’t have the same attributes.
Nonetheless, this is worth 3 minutes of your time. And if you don’t have 3 minutes the list is: service, passion, work ethic, passion, focus. persistence, drive and perfectionism. But the video adds more color and comedy.
It seems counter-intuitive to want to fail fast, but if you stop to think about it, it’s far preferable to failing slowly. Killing a bad project early is superior to letting it run and not meet requirements. The faster you fail the sooner you can test another idea, and that may be the one that leads to success, and we know that psychological traps such as anchoring means that you’re likely to keep pushing a bad idea for too long, even if it’s not working out.
What this means:
Posted in Uncategorized
Project Case Studies
