ASK Magazine - APPEL Knowledge Services

A P P L

IN THIS ISSUE

Teaming with Possibilities

What makes a successful team? This issue our contributors look closely at theheks

ostnd

his

subject and come up with several answers. Wo rking on team chemistry is t" Ac t i vation Energy" Dr. Owen Gadeken's story is about. Scott Cameron thinit's getting to know people one to one. Tony Ma t u ro says it's getting the mout of your support staff. Dr. Michael Hecht finds the best people he can abuilds the team around their talents.

Te a m w o rk is a theme we explore often in ASK, but never so directly as in tissue. You'll not only find formulas for building successful teams, you'll see exam-ples of ones in action, strategies for how project managers can motivate theirteams, and expert advice on how to choose who to work with and who not tow o rk with.

It seems like all the stories make one common point: eve ryone on a team counts.Few project managers can pull off a project alone, and when the whole team isp e rforming to eve ryone's potential, the chances of pulling off a successful pro j-ect goes up exponentially.

If that doesn't seem like enough by itself, listen to this...

Discerning fans of ASK will note the last two issues our Special Fe a t u re was" T h e re are no Mistakes, Only Lessons." We have not abandoned this feature, butfor now we want to broaden our re p e rt o i re. This issue we add a new Sp e c i a lFe a t u re, "My Me t a p h o r," starting with Paul Espinosa's article "My Big Wa l l "about his rock climbing adve n t u ress on El Capitan in Yosemite National Pa rk. Ifyou think getting to Mars is work, read what it's like to scale a 3,000-foot ro c kface.

This issue we ' re also welcoming two new members to our Re v i ew Board, Hu g hWo o d w a rd and Jody Kusek. Hugh and Jody are our first re v i ewers from outsideNASA, and we are delighted to have them on our team. Read their bios on theASK Re v i ew Board page and see why we feel privileged to have them on ourteam.

Hope eve rything is copasetic with you and your team. But if it's not, be sure totake notes on this issue of ASK.

Todd Post

A B O U T T H E A U T H O R

Academy Sharing KnowledgeThe NASA source for project management ASK Magazine

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Todd Post is the editor of A S KMagazine and works forE d u Tech Ltd. in Silver Spring,Maryland. He recently had anarticle published in K n o w l e d g eM a n a g e m e n t on A S KMagazine and the use of story-telling as part of theKnowledge Sharing initiative atN A S A .You can contact Todd att p o s t @ e d u t e c h l t d . c o mand tell him what you thinkabout this issue of A S K .

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Issue 7 F R O M T H E D I R E C TOR’S DESK

Sounds like Team Spiritby Dr. Edward Hoff m a n

I recently accompanied my son Dan to one of his guitar lessons. As I sat in a sep-arate room, I focused on the music he was playing and the beautiful, ro b u s tsound that comes from a we l l - p l a yed guitar. Later that night, I woke up aro u n d3 am. I tend to have my best thoughts at this hour. The trouble is I usually ro l lover and fall back asleep. This time I was still awake an hour later, so I got upand jotted some notes down in my study.

I was thinking about the pure, honest sound of a we l l - p l a yed instrument. Fro mt h e re my mind wandered into the realm of high-performance teams and success-ful projects. (I know this sounds we i rd, but this is the sort of thing I think aboutat 3 am. Maybe you have your own we i rd thoughts around that time.)

Consider a team in relation to music. It seems to me that a crack team cana c h i e ve a beautiful, perfect unity in the same way that a band of brilliant musi-cians can when they're in harmony with one another. With more than a little sat-isfaction I have to admit, I started to think about the great work performed foryou by the Knowledge Sharing team, including this magazine you are reading.

O ver the past two years I personally have re c e i ved some of my greatest pleasure sas the APPL Di rector from the Knowledge Sharing activities - the Ma s t e r sFo rums, NASA Center visits, ASK Magazine. The Knowledge Sharing teame x p resses such passion for their work, just like great musicians convey their pas-sion in the music they play. In the case of Knowledge Sharing, there are manyfactors that have made this so enjoyable (and hopefully worthwhile for NASA).

T h ree ingredients come to mind -- ingredients that have produced a signaturesound.

First, through the crazy, passionate playing of Alex Laufer, Michelle Collins,Denise Lee, and Todd Post, I always know that something startling and originalis going to come out of their activities. This team has consistently done thingsthat are unique and innova t i ve. For me, best of all is that they are always try i n gto improve on what they've done before.

Second, success in any endeavor stems from people who know how to interpre ta composition to sound beautiful when played in a different style. For Know l e d g eSharing to work, it must be adapted, re i n t e r p reted, shaped and played with at thecenters. In this re g a rd, we ' ve been blessed with another crazy, passionate, inspire da rtist named Claire Smith. Claire has turned Ames Re s e a rch Center in California

ASK Magazine By practitioners for practitioners

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Dr. Edward Hoffman isDirector of the NASA Academyof Program and ProjectLeadership. He is responsiblefor the development of programand project leaders and teamswithin NASA. Dr. Hoffmandevelops training curricula, con-sulting services, research proj -ects and special studies in pro-gram and project management.You can contact him at [email protected].

Issue 7 March 2002

into APPL-west. She is so good and committed to what she does that I just re f e rpeople to her whenever they have questions about implementing project man-agement development at the field level.

Fi n a l l y, any great effort re q u i res talented people working behind the scenes, thepeople who formulate a business approach and know how to manage the moneyso that the music gets heard. I have known many brilliant and cre a t i ve peoplewith a ton of ideas that never take off due to an inability to work the business.Again, the Knowledge Sharing team has been fortunate to have competent andpassionate people, specifically Tony Ma t u ro and his pro c u rement team atGo d d a rd Space Flight Center, to make sure the process is in place to support thee f f o rt. This kind of support is eve ry bit as crucial as the activity itself, and thee f f o rts and creativity that go into successful pro c u rement and contracting is avital ingredient of this successful team.

When I consider the Knowledge Sharing effort, I hear the sound of great music.You can't tell me there isn't a connection between inspired musicianship and theaccomplishments of a great team. Not when I've heard it with my own ears.

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F R O M T H E D I R E C TOR’S DESK


Sounds like Team Spirit (cont’d)

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A P P L

Issue 7 LETTER FROM THE EDITO R - I N - C H I E F

A "Sweet 16" Of Rules About Te a m w o r kby Dr. Alexander Laufer

The following "Sweet 16" rules included here derive from a longer paper byAPPL Di rector Dr. Ed w a rd Hoffman and myself entitled "99 Rules for Ma n a g i n gFa s t e r, Be t t e r, Cheaper Projects." Our sources consisted mainly of "war stories"told by master project managers in my book Simultaneous Ma n a g e m e n t :Managing Projects in a Dynamic En v i ro n m e n t ( A M ACOM, The AmericanManagement Association, 1996). The Simultaneous Management model was aresult of 10 years of intensive re s e a rch and testing conducted with the active par-ticipation of master project managers from leading private organizations such asAT & T, Du Pont, Ex xon, General Motors, IBM, Mo t o rola and Procter &Gamble.

In a more recent study, led by Dr. Hoffman, we learned that master project man-agers in leading public organizations employ most of these rules as well. Bothstudies, in private and public organizations, found that a dynamic enviro n m e n tcalls for dynamic management, and that is especially clear in how successful pro j-ect managers think about their teams.

1. Two parties (and certainly more than two) of a speedy project launched withincomplete information will find it impossible to sustain an ongoing relationshipbased on a fixed agreement that was made between them at the beginning of theproject. A more flexible mechanism, based on teamwork and collaboration, isneeded to handle the unexpected changes that are bound to arise. Therefore,contracting should emphasize cooperation rather than risk allocation.

2. Project success depends on successful teamwork. Establishing a multifunc-tional group with team spirit facilitates both communication and coord i n a-tion, and it promotes strong loyalty to the project. Such a team can makequality decisions that re p resent all disciplines.

3. No real teamwork can take place in an organization that maintains the tradi-tional division of labor, because R&D, marketing, engineering and pro d u c-tion people are loyal primarily to their re s p e c t i ve disciplines, departments andmanagers. T h e re f o re, breaking down the organization's functional walls is theminimum essential condition for teamwork.

4. Assign people for the duration of the project. Team member continuity is vitalfor better accountability and commitment. Since team knowledge lies in thes h a red viewpoints and experience that team members develop over an extend-ed period, greater continuity means better decision-making and faster projects.


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D r. Alexander Laufer is theEditor-in-Chief of A S KMagazine and a member ofthe Advisory Board of theN A S A Academy of Programand Project Leadership. He isalso a visiting professor in theCivil Engineering Departmentat the University of Marylandat College Park and Dean ofCivil Engineering at Te c h n i o n -Israel Institute of Te c h n o l o g y.You can contact him [email protected].

Issue 7 March 2002

5. Master project managers pay great attention to the size of their project team.They create the smallest team possible that includes all the necessary skills.

6. A project team should first concentrate on getting to know one another andthen on deciding on how best to function as a team. Sharing clear expecta-tions, appreciating cultural differences between organizations, and under-standing the different rew a rd systems of these organizations will reduce thetime it takes to form a finely tuned, effective team.

7. Trusting relationships are conducive to full and open exchange of informationwithin the team. In contrast, when project parties distrust each other, theywithhold re l e vant information and distort intentions, thus adding uncert a i n-ty to the project. Trust reduces the cost of planning and monitoring transac-tions between organizations.

8. Once you stereotype a team member, prejudice shapes what you see and howyou act. Thus, initial opinions of the individuals entering the project are impor-tant in shaping its final outcome. These initial opinions can force the pro j e c tinto a spiral of increasing or decreasing trust. T h e re f o re, if possible, don't selectteam members who start the project distrusting you. Build trust incre m e n t a l l yby making statements of intent, which express your desire to trust the otherp a rt y, followed by actions that support and comply with these statements.

9. You should make sure that members of your team feel dependent upon eacho t h e r, and share a belief that they are mutually responsible for project re s u l t s .A group of people who don't feel dependent upon each other is a committee,not a team.

10. You can't manufacture extraord i n a ry team performance merely by designingthe right stru c t u re, selecting the right people, providing the right vision andrew a rds, and facilitating the right work processes. All these are ve ry helpful,but to achieve peak team performance you must develop rich, intimate, andemotional relationships among skilled people who trust one another and whoe n j oy spending time with one other.

11. Dedicated teamwork does not re q u i re the ultimate sublimation of the indi-vidual. On the contrary, as a leader you should empower team members tobe constantly at their peak by giving them the necessary discretion andautonomy to make things happen.

A P P L

LETTER FROM THE EDITO R - I N - C H I E F


A "Sweet 16" Of Rules About Teamwork (cont’d)

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12. Having members with diverse professional orientations and different organi-zational interests and cultures can have only negative implications, and thisis the reason why projects and conflicts are always bound to be synonymous.True? No! Definitely false. In a collaborative environment these differe n c e smay provide the crucial positive edge that leads to innova t i ve solutions.

13. Don't ignore space and neighborhood management. Teams must spend a lotof time together, especially at the beginning. The chances are considerablybetter that geographic proximity allows people to come to appreciate ande ven like one another. Also, in co-located teams many informal face-to-faceinteractions occur daily. This frequent face-to-face communication clarifiesunderstanding and accelerates speed.

14. Don't overlook the intangibles, such as team culture, language, and ritual.They help create team identity, establish a sense of ord e r, build team spirit,release tension, and cope with time pre s s u re and uncert a i n t y.

15. If you are having fun, you aren't working, right? No -- that's absolutelyw rong! Look for the many natural opportunities to celebrate team accom-plishments and hard effort. Use these events to give team members the highvisibility and special recognition they have earned. In successful teams, funboth sustains and is sustained by team achievements.

16. To sustain performance, teamwork re q u i res constant massaging. T h e re f o re ,t h roughout the project life cycle, master project managers ensure alignmenton project objectives, assess team functioning, and re n ew team energy.

Read all of the "99 Rules for Managing Fa s t e r, Be t t e r, Cheaper Projects" ath t t p : / / 2 1 6 . 1 4 1 . 1 9 6 . 2 / N A S A / L a u f e r / 9 9 Rules.htm

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Issue 7 LETTER FROM THE EDITO R - I N - C H I E F

By practitioners for practitionersASK Magazine

A "Sweet 16" Of Rules About Teamwork (cont’d)

page 8 Issue 7 March 2002

Teaming is so common in today's project management environment that most ofus assume it comes naturally. We further assume that when presented with mean-i n gful and challenging work, project teams will naturally engage in pro d u c t i veactivity to complete their tasks. This assumption is expressed in the simple (butfalse) equation: Team + Wo rk = Te a m w o rk.

Although this equation appears simple and straightforw a rd, it is far from true formost project organizations whose reality is a complex web of institutional normsbased on individual achievement and rew a rds. This is illustrated by the ve ry firstsuccessful team experience from my early Air Fo rce care e r. As a young lieutenant,I was sent to Sq u a d ron Officer School, which was the first in the series of AirFo rce professional military education courses I was re q u i red to complete duringmy care e r. We we re immediately formed into teams of twe l ve officers. Much ofthe course featured competition between these teams.

As the most junior member of my team, I quickly observed the tremendous pressureto show individual leadership capability. At one point early in the course, almosteveryone in our group was vying to become the team leader. This conflict was sointense that it caused us to fail miserably in our first outdoor team building exercise.We spent so much time fighting over leadership that we were unable to completeany of the events on the outdoor obstacle course. This complete lack of success wasso disheartening to me that I gave our team little hope for future success.

What followed was a ve ry intense period of bickering, conflict, and even shoutingmatches as our dysfunctional team tried to cope with our early failures and findsome way to succeed. Sl owly some real leadership emerged from the more seniormembers who we re also experienced pilots, and an informal sense of teamworkand organization took shape. When we began to have some success in team com-petitions, the momentum grew. As evidence of our total turn-around, we success-fully completed all events on our second try at the outdoor obstacles near the endof our course. Our team even won the chief of staff trophy as the best overall (aca-demic and athletic) team in the course. The most surprising part of this turn-a round was that it emerged from almost complete frustration as we slowly ande ven painfully worked through our conflict to develop a sense of teamwork. Mo s tof the other student teams in our course also performed poorly on their initialteam activities but did not improve as significantly as the course went on.

British physician and re s e a rcher Wi l f red Bion (Experiences in Gro u p s, 1961) dis-c ove red that there are powe rful psychological forces inherent in all groups that

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S TO R I E S

Activation Energyby Dr. Owen Gadeken


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D r. Owen Gadeken G a d e k e nis a Professor of EngineeringManagement at the DefenseSystems Management College(DSMC) where he teachingDepartment of Defense pro-gram and project managers.He recently retired as aColonel in the Air ForceReserve where he was seniorreservist at the Air ForceO ffice of Scientific Research.Owen is a member of theAdvisory Board of the NASAAcademy of Program andProject Leadership and a fre-quent speaker at project man-agement conferences ands y m p o s i a .

REACTANTS

N2 + 3H2

TIME

CHEMICALACTIVATIONENERGY (E)

PRODUCTS

2NH3

E

Source: Chemistry in ContextG. Hill & J. Holmer,1989(Figure 25.15, p.426)

d i ve rt them from accomplishing their primary tasks. Examples of these forces areover dependency on the leader, splintering off into subgroups or cliques, andfight or flight (engaging in or fleeing from intragroup conflict). Simply stated,most teams are dysfunctional by nature. To ove rcome these restraining forces anduse the potential power of the team, greater emphasis must be placed on estab-lishing and maintaining group cohesiveness. This relationship is expressed in therevised (true) mathematical equation: Team + Wo rk (on the Team) = Te a m w o rk .

This "work on the team" is akin to a concept in chemistry called "activation ener-g y." Ac t i vation energy is particularly significant to me since I remember it was theone concept I missed on a college chemistry final exam. So this time I want to getit right. Most chemical reactions (see Fi g u re 1) re q u i re infusion of energy to drivethe reactants to form new products. We can be thankful for this or our enviro n-ment would be much more unstable with many spontaneous reactions occurring.

Using this analogy, we can then superimpose the classic stages of team building onthis same graph (see Figure 2). Forming is the entry level with storming* and norm-ing* using a much higher level of non task-oriented energy. Most teams spend muchof their time storming in what Wilfred Bion identified as the natural restrainingforces present in all groups. To overcome these natural restraining forces and moveover the "hump" to high performance, team "activation energy" is required.

As my Air Fo rce Sq u a d ron Officer School team confronted our conflicts openly,we actually got much worse before we got better. This proves to be a hallmark of

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Issue 7 S TORIES: DR. OWEN GADEKEN


Activation Energy (cont’d)

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“Simply stated, mostteams are dysfunc-tional by nature. ”

“We spent so muchtime fighting overleadership that wewere unable to com-plete any of theevents on the outdoorobstacle course. ”

Issue 7 March 2002

Figure 1.

FORMINGTEAM

TIME

(INEFFICIENT)TEAMACTIVATIONENERGY (E)

Source: Teams inContextO. Gadeken, 1996 (EFFICIENT)

HIGHPERFORMINGTEAM

E

Storming Norming

high performing teams: openly confronting their conflicts rather than smoothingthem over or concealing them as hidden agendas. Teams unwilling or unable tod e vote the energy to working through their conflicts will remain on the stormingand norming "roller coaster" with most of their energy dissipated in nonpro d u c-t i ve activity. My Air Fo rce Sq u a d ron Officer School team was able to move ove rthis hump but only through some ve ry intense storming.

To be successful, project teams must work as hard on their team as they do ontheir projects. Only then will they have the "activation energy" to reach and sus-tain high perf o r m a n c e .

Lessons:

• To be successful, project team members must work as hard on the team (relation-

ships and processes) as they do on their project.

• Openly confronting conflicts (rather than smoothing them over or concealing them as

hidden agendas) is a hallmark of high performing project teams.

* Storming. This stage of team development is often marked with interpersonal

conflict. Members may form alliances resulting in subgroup competition and con-

flict, and questions may arise about both the task and process of the team.

* Norming . In this stage of team development, the team establishes guidelines for

their group processes, and commitment develops for achieving team goals.

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S TORIES: DR. OWEN GADEKEN


Activation Energy (cont’d)

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Q u e s t i o n

Do you have your own example

of how team “activation energy”

worked for (or against) you?

Figure 2.

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Issue 7 S TO R I E S

How I Love My 80 Percentersby Anthony J. Maturo

Don't ever take your support staff for granted. By support staff, I mean the peo-ple in personnel, logistics, and finance; the ones who can make things happenwith a phone call or a signature, or by the same token frustrate you to no end bytheir inaction; these are people you must depend on.

I ' ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to cultivate relationships with mys u p p o rt staff that work to the advantage of both of us. The most important thingthat I have learned working with people, any people--and I will tell you how Ilearned this in a minute--is there are some folks you just can't motivate, so for-get it, don't try; others you certainly can with a little psychology and some effort ;and the best of the bunch, what I call the 80 perc e n t e r s, you don't need to moti-vate because they're already on the team and performing beautifully.

The ones you can't change are rocks. Face up to it, and just kick them out of yo u rw a y. I have a reputation with the people who don't want to perform or be partof the team. They don't come near me. If someone's a rock, I pick up on it righta w a y, and I will walk around him or her to find someone better.

The ones who can be motivated I take time to nurt u re. I consider them my pro j-ects. A lot of times these wannabes are people who want to help but don't knowh ow. Listen, you can work with them. Lots of people in organizations have themindset that all that matters are the regulations. God forbid if you ever work out-side those regulations. T h e y ' ve got one foot on that regulation and they're hold-ing it tight like a baby holds a blanket.

What yo u ' re looking for is that first sign that their minds are opening. Us u a l l yyou hear it in their vo c a b u l a ry. What used to sound like "We can't do that...theregulations won't allow it...we have never done this before," well, suddenly thatchanges to "We have options...let's take a look at the options...let me re s e a rc hthis and get back to you."

The 80 perc e n t e r s you want to nurt u re too, but they're already on the team. T h e80 perc e n t e r s k n ow the regulation, but if there is a problem because of a re g u l a-tion, they will still tell you, "Don't worry about it, I've got it under contro l . "These people don't see themselves as guardians of the regulations. Instead, theysee themselves as customer service re p re s e n t a t i ves. Two 80 perc e n t e r s on my teama re Hettie Courtney at Go d d a rd Space Flight Center and Debbie Randall atNASA He a d q u a rters in Code B. Thank you, ladies, ve ry much. You are the best.


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Anthony J. Maturo is thedeputy director of NASA'sAcademy of Program & ProjectLeadership. He is responsiblefor the management of con-tract arrangements and day-to-day operations. In addition, hehas a beautiful wife namedN a n .

Issue 7 March 2002

Back to Ba s i c sI said I would talk about how I learned to work with support people. My gre a t-est education came before I was at NASA in what may seem the unlikeliest ofplaces. While I was an elementary school principal in Fa i rfield, Connecticut, Ilearned that my best ideas could never be implemented unless I had my supportpeople at the school behind me. These we re people like the janitors, the cafeteriaw o rkers, the school nurse, the librarians, the bus drivers. For example, if I want-ed the kids to be proud of the school and take care of it, the rooms had to be kepttidy and neat. If Sam the janitor didn't line the chairs up, what did that tell thekids about how the adults felt about the school?

He re's another example. I wanted eve ryone who worked for me to respect eacho t h e r, so I instituted a "switch day" twice a ye a r. I would be the third gradeteacher for a day, and she would be principal. The school nurse would teach gym,and the librarian would work as the cafeteria monitor. Eve rybody got a chance toexperience a day at the school from someone else's perspective. The point was tos h ow that we we re all working as a team and that eve rybody was contributing.

What kind of rew a rds did this yield? I remember going into the cafeteria onetime and seeing a group of first graders spilling milk all over themselves. You eve ropen up one of those milk cartons kids are expected to drink out of? Well, yo ushould try one day, because it's not easy.

I wanted the kids to have a good lunch period. I didn't want them spilling theirmilk all over themselves. I wanted them to be comfortable, so that when they gotback to their classrooms they could settle down, they we ren't frustrated, and itwasn't a burden on the teachers. This meant I had to ask the teachers on duty inthe cafeteria and the cafeteria workers to help the kids open their milk cart o n s .The teachers didn't want to pay for this later with disturbances in their class-rooms because the kids we re frustrated. Someone was going to have to clean upthe mess, and that was going to be those cafeteria workers. People could see thatwhat affected one person spilled over (pun intended) into other people's work.

When you ask people to do more than what's narrowly defined by their posi-tions, you have to be willing to show you too will step outside the box .Sometimes when it was real cold outside I would tell the teacher to go inside andI would stay out on the playground to watch the kids. They knew I was doingthem a favor because their contract stated that they had to be out there with thekids. Doing things like this made it possible to get the same kind of help in

A P P L

S TORIES: A N T H O N Y J. MAT U R O

Academy Sharing KnowledgeThe NASAsource for project management ASK Magazine

How I Love My 80 Percenters ( c o n t ’ d )

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“The ones who can bemotivated I take timeto nurture. I considerthem my projects. ”

return. For example, I wanted the teachers to come out and meet the studentswhen they got off their busses in the morning, especially in the cold when therewas ice on the ground. The kids could slip as they got off the bus. I knew theteachers pre f e r red to be in their classrooms, or in the teacher's lounge, smokingand drinking coffee. I could have bullied them, but I believe nurturing people isa better way to get them to move to where you want to go. I kidded around withthem. I bought them little boots to we a r. They saw me out there too.

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Issue 7 S TORIES: A N T H O N Y J. MAT U R O



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“When you ask peopleto do more thanw h a t ’s narrowlydefined by their posi-tions, you have to bewilling to show youtoo will step outsidethe box. ”

Issue 7 March 2002

Astronauts stand out from the rest of the team, but no one would get off the

ground without the hard work of the unsung 80 Percenters.

By and large, what I found is that if you start nurturing people, if you re s p e c tthem and try to understand them, they will try to understand you too, ande ve ryone starts playing as a team.

My 80 Pe rc e n t e r s, And How T h ey Wo rk For MeIt's always tough when a person I've nurt u red and has become an 80 perc e n t e rhas to leave. I had this happen recently with a gal in Pro c u rement. At the startshe was a wannabe, and I worked hard with her. To come that far, I hated to loseh e r. She left to take care of her sister who had cancer. What can you say? A per-son's got to do what she has to do. I could gnash my teeth and get all fru s t r a t e d ,but that doesn't solve my problem of filling that void.

The person we brought in to replace her I've been working with for a few monthsn ow, and she's coming up to speed. It's a great feeling I get when I know thechange has occurred, like the first time I ask them to bend around the re q u i re-ment, and I don't hear any objection to this.

You know that people are on the team when you hear them say, "He y, do yo umind if I take a cut at this first?" When they come to me and say, "He y, To n y,did you ever think of doing it this way?" At that point I know they're on theteam. When I start hearing that, the commitment, the passion, the understand-ing, it's there and they're motivated.

When yo u ' ve worked with enough people as I have, you have a cadre of experi-enced 80 perc e n t e r s a round to help out when newcomers arrive. "Look, this ish ow you deal with To n y," they told my girl in Pro c u rement. "Yeah, he's a pain inthe butt, but this is what he needs, and this is why he's got a lot of pre s s u re onhim." Now it's not just me anymore doing the nurturing. It's just like when I wasa school principal. You want the team to see all our work as interdependent andthat helping each other is as important as helping me. The more staff you havewho see it this way, the easier your job becomes in bringing people along.

It's The Nu rturing, St u p i dIt's not enough just to work with them, and then leave them alone. You can dothat, but if you really want to put a crack team in place you must continue ton u rt u re them. The way you do this is by recognition.

W h e n e ver I can, I try to show I appreciate their contributions. For instance, Ih a ve some young ladies who handle my invoices. Right before their eva l u a t i o n s

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S TORIES: A N T H O N Y J. MAT U R O



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“No one works harderthan he who is proudof his job, and peoplewho are recognizedfor a job well donecan’t help but feelproud. ”

Q u e s t i o n

Do you remember an experi-

ence where having a good

relationship with a person in a

support position made a signifi-

cant difference on a project?

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Issue 7 S TORIES: A N T H O N Y J. MAT U R O



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come up, I will talk with their managers and tell them what a great job they aredoing for me. I bring Ed Hoffman, the APPL Di re c t o r, to visit them when hestops by. "You know who this young lady is?" I say to him. "She's the one whotakes care of all of our invoices. She's done a hell of a job. Tell them how manyyou missed." "I didn't miss any," she says. "See that, Dr. Hoffman. This is thekind of person you have working for you." I make sure that he understands thepeople he rarely notices are contributing to the success of his program.

You want people to feel like they are part of a team, and understand that theircontributions to the team matter. Respect the people you expect things out ofand you are much more likely to get more than you bargained for from them. Noone works harder than he who is proud of his job, and people who are re c o g n i ze dfor a job well done can't help but feel proud. It's what we ' ve learned works inm o t i vating kids at school, and it works with adults in their jobs.

Su p p o rt staff is the backbone to project work. Project managers who see theircontributions and re c o g n i ze them are improving the whole team's chances of suc-cess.

Lessons:

• Figure out the people you need to nurture. A few people are not worth the effort, but

most definitely are, and you can save yourself a lot of time and aggravation if you

determine early on who can be motivated.

• It pays to nurture people and help them understand their importance to the overall

value of the team.

• Respect people and you are much more likely to get more than you bargained for

from them.

• Don't disregard lessons in life from previous experiences. What you learned in these

d i fferent situations may be transferable to your current work.

Issue 7 March 2002

A P P L

S TO R I E S

Keeping the Dealby Dr. Michael Hecht

On the 4th of July 1997, I lay on a blanket with my family at a firew o rks displaynear our home in Los Angeles, California. The pyrotechnics, they tell me, we redazzling. I wouldn't know. My attention was fixed on a tiny orange dot in the sky- Mars.

A month earlier, NASA had released an Announcement of Op p o rtunity for as u p p l e m e n t a ry payload on the Mars Su rve yor Lander mission scheduled forlaunch in 2001. The Human Exploration and De velopment of Space (HEDS)organization had been authorized to make the most pre l i m i n a ry of inve s t i g a t i o n sinto the feasibility of sending humans to Mars. Among the requested inve s t i g a-tions was an opportunity to study the dust and soil of the Red Planet, emphasiz-ing possible hazards to human explorers. I spent that summer of '97 working ona proposal for the project I would eventually lead, the Mars En v i ro n m e n t a lCompatibility Assessment (MECA). MECA was selected in Fe b ru a ry of '98. Wep romised to deliver four new instruments by April 2000 with a modest budget of$5M. I suppose we we re too inexperienced to know any better.

Assembling the teamThis is a story about some of the people who created MECA. Like the Su p e r b ow lchampion New England Patriots, the MECA team was built from castoffs, orga-nizational misfits, and a few superstars that had been overlooked in the draft.

The 5-7 core members we re mostly "technologists," the nomenclature we use at theNASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for R&D scientists in non-space disci-plines. We we re generalists, not specialized engineers, and we had little or no flightexperience. We we re cre a t i ve, but not ve ry good at following instructions. But thiswas a good time for innovators and problem solvers. JPL was rolling out "faster-better-cheaper" projects, replacing one-a-decade mega-missions with a flotilla ofm i c ro-missions, and implementing our own brand of corporate re-engineering.

Veterans of the great observatories, of Cassini, Galileo, and Magellan, we re in manyways no better pre p a red than we we re for this new way of doing business. We tookthe most motivated people we could find and built an organizational chart aro u n dthem. I pushed people out of their professional comfort zones, encouraging themto grow in other areas. As the technology expert, I presented budgets and schedulesat our re v i ews, while the schedule and budget expert re p o rted on technicalp ro g ress. I aimed to have at least two people capable of doing eve ry job.


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D r. Michael Hecht is projectmanager and a co-investigatorfor the Mars EnvironmentalCompatibility A s s e s s m e n t(MECA). He has been withN A S A since 1982 at the JetPropulsion Laboratory (JPL).In his previous assignmentwith NASA's New MillenniumProgram, he was instrumentalin defining the "microlander"that was adopted as NASA'sNew Millennium Program DeepSpace 2. Dr. Hecht is a mem-ber of the ASK Review Board.

I secured a large room adjacent to a laboratory, setting up desks along the wallsand a small conference table in the middle. No walls, no dividers. I didn't forc epeople to give up their offices, but I did move eve rybody's computer to his or hern ew desk. It was re m a rkable how fast they followed! We we re constantly togeth-e r, each of us listening with half an ear to eve ry meeting, conversation, and phonecall. T h e re was no such thing as priva c y, but we we re enormously efficient. Wedidn't need staff meetings to know what was going on, and few potential mis-takes or opportunities went unnoticed. We spent two years in close company, andd e veloped an intimacy that got us through hard times.

While many engineers can competently design and build instruments, I felt thatour unique challenge was to find the 100 gremlins waiting to trip us up. Fi n d i n ga mistake was a good thing, it meant one less gremlin to worry about. Andnotwithstanding JPL's institutional fervor for process-based management andt h o rough re v i ew, that last gremlin can only be found by a particularly dedicatedindividual waking up in alarm in the middle of the night. My job as Pro j e c tManger was to cultivate that attitude of ow n e r s h i p.

You Gotta Ha ve He a rt (and So c c e r )I thought I knew all about Mitch Shellman until his funeral. That's when Ilearned about the fellow who, late in the Vietnam Wa r, dropped out of the Gre e nBe rets and joined the medics because that was the only available avenue to thef ront lines. About the veteran who clawed his way up from custodian to contractn e g o t i a t o r. About the quotes from Mother Te resa peppering his logbooks. Ab o u this passionate commitment to youth soccer.

Mitch never doubted that, despite his lack of technical education, he wouldsomeday be a Project Ma n a g e r. I signed him on because he was willing to dow h a t e ver it took, and because he had somehow learned an enormous amountabout building and managing flight instruments. To the institution, he was acontract negotiator from pro c u rement. To me, he was In s t rument Ma n a g e r,Deputy Project Ma n a g e r, and friend. Tenacious and tireless, he turned on thelights in the morning and was the last to leave at night. It took us a year of argu-ment with management about his credentials before he was transferred to a tech-nical division. A week later, the day after Christmas, he died of a heart attack inhis drivew a y. The toughest thing I ever had to do as a Project Manager was tocome in on Ja n u a ry 2 and say to the rest of the team, "Let's get back to work."

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Keeping the Deal (cont’d)

page 1 8 Issue 7 March 2002

“We took the mostmotivated people wecould find and built anorganizational chartaround them. ”

The Wit and Wisdom of Tom Me l oy Twenty years ago a doctor gave Tom Me l oy six months to live. That doctor is nolonger with us but Tom, well into his eighth decade, shows no sign of slow i n gd own. An expert in the physics of particles (the gritty va r i e t y, not the subatomicones), Tom had last worked for NASA in the Apollo era and was now comfort-ably ensconced in an endowed chair at West Virginia Un i ve r s i t y. When I askedhim to be the MECA Principal In vestigator (P.I.), Tom's response was "You don'twant me, I'm an emotional cripple." His wife of 50 years had died 3 monthsb e f o re. But I convinced him of the therapeutic value of the new challenge, andneither of us ever re g retted it.

Unlike other P.I.'s, Tom was not the project architect, the autocratic decision-m a k e r, or even the scientific guru of MECA. He was, quite simply, our mentorand our inspiration. No person or task was of lesser importance to him than anyo t h e r. Eve ry visit to JPL began with his asking me "whom should I take to din-

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The MECA team pictured here at their home base, NASA’s Jet Propulsion

Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

ner?" And whoever it was, sponsor or secre t a ry, technician or engineer, wouldcome in the next day with re n ewed motivation and appreciation of their role inour unusual project.

Tom never forgot that, to the rest of the world, ours was the most extraord i n a ryof opportunities. At our first meeting he reminded us that we had "an opport u-nity to place a tile in the corridor of history." He coached me on how to managewhen your project is "long on prestige but short on cash." He taught me that, ona small team, eve rybody needs someone who can step into their shoes at amoment's notice. He taught me to be parsimonious with the written word, tobanish adjectives, to never say "ve ry," and to avoid starting sentences with "the."Tom always said, "Managing is parenting." He was, I'm sure, one hell of a par-ent.

Keeping the De a lMy first presentation as a project manager featured a slide that said, "Keep theDeal." By this I meant not just the deal with our sponsors, but with our team,our contractors, our management, and ultimately with the American people.

MECA depended on subcontractors to make several of our instruments. I madea point to find contractors who we re big enough to do the job but small enoughto care about us. It was my objective to treat these contractors much the same aswe treat our in-house technical organizations, and vice versa. I tried to react eve n -handedly to ove r runs, schedule slips, and product failures, and to be equally will-ing to help them out when they we re in trouble. I encouraged them to tell meabout problems, concerns, and innova t i ve ideas. I re m e m b e red to ask the con-tractors regularly how they we re making out - we re they making money or losingmoney on the contract? I tried to find other ways to help them out, by writinga rticles for their trade journals or helping them with proposals. As a rule, theMECA contractors outperformed their in-house counterparts, and we formedpersonal relationships that have outlasted the project.

Pa rt of the deal was encouraging our team members to enjoy their lives outsideof the Laboratory. I encouraged people to make working late the exception, notthe rule, and to take their two weeks of vacation eve ry ye a r. A Project Ma n a g e rwho can't accommodate the 4% schedule margin those vacations re p resent justhasn't planned ve ry well.

I made a point to set a personal example, not to try to prove that I could work

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Issue 7 S TORIES: DR. MICHAEL H E C H T




“ I made a point to findcontractors who werebig enough to do thejob but small enoughto care about us. ”

longer hours than anyone else. I made sure that nobody was so indispensable thatwe couldn't do without him or her. At JPL's suggestion, we declared (ande n f o rced) "meeting-free" weeks during prime vacation time. We re m e m b e red toknock off early for the occasional beer, to go off for lunch, or to turn a long dis-cussion into a walk in the woods.

Did it work? Only part i a l l y. MECA was under-funded and over-ambitious, andpeople will do what's necessary. Two team members filled up their "non-work-ing" time with grueling degree programs. But five babies we re born into oursmall project, so folks must have spent some time at home!

Loss and Legacy Lynne Cooper, who rescued us in mid-project by replacing Mitch Sh e l l m a n ,taught me about legacy. Legacy is not, as I had imagined, just about hard w a reand software delive red and documented. It is equally about skills learned, meth-ods evaluated, students inspired, and people trained and educated.

Nearly three years of our lives felt swept away when our mission was scru b b e dafter the loss of Mars Polar Lander. My grief for the loss of MECA, in a smallerw a y, lives in the same place as my grief for the loss of my friend Mitch. T h i n k i n gof either can bring a momentary, crushing sense of weariness. It can also bring anu pwelling of pride. This isn't, after all, a story about a failure. We kept our dealand left our legacy.

Lessons:

• Build your organization chart and your team norms around the talents and person-

alities of your staff.

• Gently broaden perspectives and build a sense of ownership by assigning responsi-

bilities outside people's comfort zones.

• Establish an understudy at every position, including your own, to allow for vacations,

illness, or reassignment.

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Q u e s t i o n

What does it take for an entire

organization to ‘keep the deal’?

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Issue 7 S TO R I E S

The Idyllic Wo r k p l a c eby Tony E. Schoenfelder

How many of us have worked in organizations where the discipline was so rigidand unyielding that it would send even a Marine Corps Drill In s t ructor scre a m-ing into the night? How many of us have worked in organizations where sightingsof senior management we re sporadic and rare, and any other interactions we re byappointment only? Or, how many of us have worked in organizations where yo u rrole, absent specific direction, was to be seldom seen and rarely heard? And howmany of us have worked in organizations where seemingly light itself was not per-mitted to escape without the acquiescence and approval of the director? Sa d l y,t h e re are organizations that embody some of these conditions, and the re s u l t a n ta d verse effects on employee pro d u c t i v i t y, creativity and morale are profound.

But what if you could work in an organization in which there was little hierar-c h y, where rank and seniority played no part, where there we re no closed meet-ings or doors, where eve ryone knows what was expected of them, and where cre-ativity was not only tolerated but encouraged and celebrated? Was there ever sucha place? T h e re was, and it was known as NASA's Space Station Task Fo rce. I wasf o rtunate enough to work there for a time, and I would like to tell you how thisorganization with few apparent rules led to incredibly high levels of employee sat-isfaction and fulfillment, and yielded work products of enduring quality.

On May 20, 1982, NASA Administrator James M. Beggs established the Sp a c eStation Task Fo rce under the direction of John D. Hodge. The Task Fo rce wascharged with the responsibility for "the development of the programmatic aspectsof a Space Station as they evo l ve, including mission analysis, re q u i rements defi-nition and program management," and was authorized to draw on Space St a t i o nactivities at the NASA Program Offices and Field Centers. No additional condi-tions or directions we re prov i d e d .

Hodge knew that in order to accomplish the job he had been given, he was goingto have to obtain the services of the "best and the brightest" and facilitate theunleashing of the full force of their cre a t i ve capabilities. In order to avoid thestultifying effects of a typical hierarchical organization, he set up a loosely stru c-t u red, horizontal organization with only one supervisor of re c o rd - himself. Hepopulated this organization with detailees from He a d q u a rters, the field Centersand the Jet Propulsion Lab, there by assuring himself of the political and techni-cal expertise with which to deal with Congress and the bure a u c r a c y, and conductthe re q u i red engineering studies and analyses. The decision to use detailees wasan important one, as it enabled the best talent available to sign on to the Ta s kFo rce for up to a year while still retaining rights to their permanent positions.


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Tony E. Schoenfelder h a sbeen with NASA for 21 yearsand is currently on detail withthe Office of Space Science.Prior to this, he served at bothReston and NASAHeadquarters where he per-formed independent manage-ment-level assessments,worked in resource manage-ment, and developed and pre-sented program analysis train-ing materials for the SpaceStation Program. With theexception of a four-year hiatusin the mid 90s, he has workedon the Space Station Programsince January of 1984.

Issue 7 March 2002

T h e re we re so many tasks and so few people to accomplish them that almoste ve ryone was in charge of something. Members had multiple assignments, serve din several different working groups, and in general knew what eve ryone else wasdoing. The absence of any kind of organizational turf to defend allowed themembers to participate fully with one another tow a rd achieving a common goal,thus engendering a strong sense of ownership in the program. This unity of pur-pose led to spontaneous offers of assistance to colleagues who we re wrestling withp a rticularly difficult problems. It was almost as if the entire Task Fo rce turnedout on snowy days to help each other dig out their vehicles. Grade levels or sen-iority we re ignored when pulling together teams to address particular issues. AGS-14 could lead a team comprising any and all grades, including Se n i o rExe c u t i ve Se rvices (SES). This unselfishness led to the existence of an esprit decorps where by the vast majority of the members truly cared more about gettingthe job done than who re c e i ved the cre d i t .

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S TORIES: TO N Y E. SCHOENFELDER


The Idyllic Workplace (cont’d)

page 2 3

An early model (circa 1961) of an inflatable space station concept, 24 feet in

diameter with an internal fabric bulkhead that could be separately pressurized

in an emergency.

Hodge combined a number of practices and innovations that led to a unique anduninhibited atmosphere. Each day started at 8:15 AM with an unstru c t u red 15-minute all-hands stand-up meeting. Only those who had something important tosay took the floor, while eve ryone else crowded into the office or hallway to lis-ten. It turned out to be a useful device in that it not only conve yed information,but also physically reunited the team each morning to re i n f o rce the spirit ofcamaraderie and the sense of shared purpose.

If Hodge had lived in ancient Greece, he would have been one of Aristotle's peri-patetics. He practiced "management by walking around," and was liable to popup unannounced anywhere at anytime, but more often after five o'clock in thee vening. Once the members learned that he was not engaged in some new formof "gotcha," these impromptu one-on-one sessions proved ve ry useful. He notonly got to know each member as a person, but also re c e i ved an unfiltered heads-up as to what was going on.

Hodge didn't believe in secrets. He was completely open with the staff. What hek n ew, they knew. Members appreciated this unusual candor and re c i p rocated bykeeping him and the leadership well informed. This policy of openness extendedto meetings as well. If notice of a meeting appeared on a calendar, it was open toa n yone to attend. The exchange of information far outweighed any potentialabuse of the privilege, and besides, no one had enough time to become a pro f e s-sional meeting-goer. Hodge also had a unique open-door policy where by anyo n ewas free to visit with him and discuss any matter of importance. Members we reencouraged to take advantage of this opportunity by Hodge's own mantra of," Fo r g i veness, not permission." Needless to say, rumors didn't stand a chance inthis environment of openness.

Within the Task Fo rce, there was no such thing as a dumb idea. Members we reencouraged to speak up without fear of laughter or reprisal, and as soon as eve ry-one learned that even far out ideas or concepts would be given just and due con-sideration, brainstorming sessions became ve ry pro d u c t i ve.

Just as important as the uninhibited atmosphere was the manner in which thec re a t i ve capabilities of the members we re unleashed. With so many things to do,the needs of the Task Fo rce soon outstripped the formal skill mixes of thee m p l oyees then onboard. Hodge re c o g n i zed that NASA employees tend tobecome typecast early in their careers, so he gave them the opportunity to workon things entirely new to their experience. A number of people subsequently

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page 2 4

“ If Hodge had lived inancient Greece, hewould have been oneof A r i s t o t l e ’s peripatet-ics. ”

Issue 7 March 2002

e m b a rked on entirely new careers as a result. Members we re encouraged to takerisks, and we re assured that failure was an absolutely acceptable consequence.One re m a rkable innovation that encouraged risk-taking and the demonstrationof flexibility and here t o f o re unknown talents was "Try - A - Jo b." New membershad the opportunity to work in any or all functions for up to thirty days beforehaving to commit to a single job. This led to an almost unheard of degree of jobsatisfaction, with a concomitant impact on results and pro d u c t i v i t y.

Hodge also practiced a unique form of part i c i p a t i ve management. He believe dthat by allowing the members to participate in decisions that directly impactedtheir jobs, they would tend to support what they helped create. The decisionp rocess that resulted could best be described as collegial, although decisions we remade by the Di rector rather than collectively by the members. Howe ve r, thesedecisions we re preceded by lively and often boisterous debates wherein memberscould argue their viewpoints, pro or con, without fear of retribution. Ho d g eretained ultimate control of the process, but the decisions that resulted we re" owned" by those who agreed with them and at least understood by those whodidn't. T h e re we re no "secret" decisions.

With such an open, informal and unstru c t u red organization of such disparate tal-ents, there had to be some unifying force to focus the members' energies. It turnedout that they all shared the dream or vision of a permanently manned presence inspace. Eve rything they did was geared tow a rd realizing that goal, and the uniqueo p p o rtunities offered by the Task Fo rce served as ve ry powe rful motivators.

The Space Station Task Fo rce accomplished many things during its two-year life,the most important of which led to the announcement during the State of theUnion Ad d ress on Ja n u a ry 25, 1984: "Tonight, I am directing NASA to deve l o pa permanently manned Space Station and to do it within a decade." But the mostenduring legacy of the Task Fo rce may lie within the hearts and memories ofthose who served as members. It is simply that almost eve ryone remembers thattime as the most enjoyable and pro d u c t i ve of his or her care e r.

Lessons:

• A leader understands that when confronted with a challenging task the most impor-

tant factor is selecting the best people from across the organization.

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“Members wereencouraged to takerisks, and wereassured that failurewas an absolutelyacceptable conse-quence. ”

• A culture of freedom and trust coupled with excellent people committed to one objec-

tive enable you to achieve both the openness required for innovation and the disci-

pline necessary for rapid progress.

Frank Hoban, one of the first few members chosen to serve on the Space Station

Task Force, has written a paper entitled, “The Space Station Task Force: A S t u d y

of a Management Style.” In it, Mr. Hoban describes the organizational structure and

the rationales for the various processes and practices that made service on the

Task Force such a unique experience. The story you have just read was based on

the memory of the author as well as memories and anecdotes of other former Ta s k

Force members, but depends heavily upon Mr. Hoban’s paper for factual data.

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Q u e s t i o n

Assuming you were part of a

team where the chemistry was

terrific and everyone felt like he

or she was contributing, what

was the catalyst?

Issue 7 March 2002

A P P L

S P E C I A L F E ATURE: MY M E TA P H O R

My Big Wa l lby Paul Espinosa


page 2 7

“Rain! Rain! Why today?" I cursed to myself.

It was June and I was in Yosemite National Pa rk in California, 2,000-feet off theg round . I was climbing El Capitan, a majestic 3,000-foot high, mile-wide gran-ite monolith--one of the most sought after and spectacular rock climbs in theworld. After three days of climbing on its sheer face, and having completed themost difficult part of the route, my partner and I we re heading down. A thun-derstorm lasting all night and into the morning had soaked our tiny perch andall our worldly possessions.

We began rappelling down the ve rtical wall by sliding to the ends of two 50-meter ropes tied together and looped through a set of fixed rings bolted into therock. At the end of the ropes was another rappel station consisting of a set ofrings, placed by previous climbers for re t reating parties, which we used to anchoro u r s e l ves to the rock face. We then pulled the ropes down from the rings above ,t h readed the ones in front of our noses and started down another rope length.

Eve rything we brought up for our five-day climb to the summit we had to bringback down with us: ropes, climbing gear of eve ry sort, sleeping bags, extraclothes, food, water, and other essentials. All this we either stuffed into a haul bag(an ove r s i zed re i n f o rced duffel bag) or slung over our shoulders. The re t reat wass l ow and methodical, akin to a train backing down a mountain, giving me ampletime to think.

My situation made me think about my work, mostly, about all the projects I havemanaged, or been invo l ved in managing. As a NASA project manager, I havew o rked on a number of successful projects. I have also been invo l ved in a num-ber of projects I never saw the end of. I thought about all the projects I trans-f e r red off of for other opportunities, projects that we re in full stride and ran outof funding, and ones put on the shelf because they would not meet a flight date.Oh yes, I have had many success, to be sure, or I would have burned out ye a r sa g o. Lessons from both the successful and not-so-successful projects have taughtme valuable lessons, but it has always been the failures where I've learned themost. This is the thought I held onto as I headed down El Capitan, trying to keepin perspective the immense disappointment I felt in re t reating.

We we re about half way down the cold wet wall, coming down from out of theclouds, when the rain began easing up. By now each of us had experienced our


Paul S. Espinosa is theProject Manager andContracting Off i c e r’s Te c h n i c a lRepresentative for theAdvanced Animal Habitat-Centrifuge for the SpaceStation Biological ResearchProject at NASA’s A m e sResearch Center. A member othe Astrobiology and SpaceResearch Directorate since1995, he has provided engi-neering leadership as a devel-oper of animal habitats forShuttle and Space Stationapplication. Paul's love ofclimbing started while a university student in 1985.

f

-

own personal despair, shivering, wondering if we had made the right decision:should we have tried to stick it out just a little longer? To counter the self-doubt,we swapped tales of climbers swimming for their lives in torrential waterf a l l s ,f re ezing to icy walls like a child's tongue on an icebox, or slowly dying ofhypothermia. We knew we had made the right decision to head down, but it wasstill hard. Good judgment sometimes means cutting your losses lest you losee ve rything, and in this case "eve rything" was no mere figure of speech.

Re t reating was made worse by the fact that this was not the first, nor the secondtime, I had been on this route, but the third. I have successfully climbed manyother "big walls" (technically challenging rock faces usually requiring more thenone day to climb), including another route on El Capitan; howe ve r, this part i c u-lar route is my Holy Grail. It is called the "Nose" route because it runs down thecenter of El Capitan.

On my first attempt to climb the "Nose," I was ill pre p a red for the enormity ofthe task. In spite of weeks of planning and preparation, and years of climbingb e t ween my partner and me, I did not understand what was invo l ved in a climbof this scale. Climbing a 3,000-foot big wall entails inching one's way up cracksystems amidst dizzying exposure while hauling 150 pounds of supplies with yo u .On the second day, my partner dropped a bag of gear, requiring us to re t reat tothe ground, and the climb ended for us there.

My second attempt was two years later with the same part n e r. He had complet-ed this particular climb since our failed attempt. I also had two extra years ofclimbing experience, including a different big wall climb under my belt. I waswell trained, had made careful preparations and was fully ready to follow myp a rtner's leadership on the climb. T h e re was howe ver one thing I was not pre-p a red for. In the year prior to the climb my partner had lost a loved one. He hadnot climbed more than a day or two since then. This climb was going to be hisway of "getting back into shape."

By the middle of the third day we we re only one-quarter of the way up the wall.The pace was tort u re, and there was the eve r - i n c reasing certainty that we wouldrun out of food and water before reaching the top. In spite of my experience andmeticulous preparations, I was not pre p a red to take the leadership roll and thei n i t i a t i ve to speed up the pace. I was frustrated, he was frustrated, and a trip tothe ground was in ord e r.

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Issue 7 S P E C I A L F E ATURE: PA U L E S P I N O S A


My Big Wall (cont’d)


“Lessons from boththe successful andn o t - s o - s u c c e s s f u lprojects have taughtme valuable lessons,but it has alwaysbeen the failureswhere I've learned them o s t . ”

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S P E C I A L F E ATURE: PA U L E S P I N O S A

Academy Sharing KnowledgeThe NASA source for project management MagazineASK


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“The pace was torture,and there was theever-increasing cer-tainty that we wouldrun out of food andwater before reachingthe top. ”

So here I was on my third attempt, another two years later. I had trained physi-cally for the climb, practiced numerous shorter routes, and was pre p a red to climbas an equal with a new part n e r, one who was ve ry competent and climbed at my

Yosemite National Park is a rock climbing Mecca. Conquering El Capitan,

the rock pictured here, was NASA project manager Paul Espinosa’s objective

on this mission.

l e vel. The climb had been going wonderf u l l y. For two days we swapped leads,w o rking together to compensate for each other's weaknesses. By the end of the sec-ond day we made it to 2,000 feet. We fell asleep under the stars, looking forw a rdto the remaining 1,000 feet of climbing we figured to take another couple of days.

At some point during the night I heard raindrops. We both had waterproof cov-ers over our sleeping bags, and we re pre p a red for a storm, as long as it didn'tbecome too seve re. Un f o rt u n a t e l y, seve re is what we got. Raindrops came at usf rom all directions, even blowing directly up at us from below by the wind. Totop it off, our granite "camp" was cove red with 1/4 inch of flowing water. Lu c k i l ythe lightning stayed about 5 miles away, but at 2,000 feet up the wall with all themetal of our gear around us, we still felt like sitting ducks.

Eve rything that was not in our individual sleeping bags got soaked. We peere dout of our dry cocoons in the morning's first light to our new watery world. Andt h ree hours later with no letup in sight, we decided to head down.

Be l ow 1,000 feet the rest of the re t reat got easier as the rain turned to drizzle. Wepassed another party of climbers whose re t reat was not going as smoothly. W h e nwe asked them how things we re, they answe red with a raft of expletives.

By two o'clock in the afternoon we we re on the ground. I was happy to be safeand looking forw a rd to hot cocoa and a showe r. Still, I was saddened over thedefeat. For future climbs, this kind of experience helps one keep success in per-p e c t i ve. Things happen that you can't always control in such unstable enviro n-

ments as a 3,000-foot rock climb. On projects like this you can never control allthe objective hazards you may face. But this is what makes it such a thrilling chal-lenge, and why I keep coming back.

My triumph on "The Nose" route of El Capitan will come eve n t u a l l y, I'm sureof it, and at that point I will certainly have earned it.

L e s s o n s

• A can-do attitude and willingness to take risks should not distort your judgment to

know whether to abort the project in midcourse.

• In project life, we very often learn more from our failures than our successes.

A P P L

Issue 7 S P E C I A L F E ATURE: PA U L E S P I N O S A



page 3 0

Q u e s t i o n

Have you seen projects where

it was clear they would fail

because their leaders lacked

the fortitude to abort before the s i n e v i t a b l e ?

Issue 7 March 2002

A P P L

F E AT U R E S

The Join-Up Meeting by W. Scott Cameron

I recently took on a new assignment and, as is my norm, I scheduled a series ofo n e - h o u r, 1:1 join-up meetings with the various lead personnel on the team andtheir hierarc h y. During one of these meetings, the person I was meeting withinformed me how pleasantly surprised she was that I had scheduled this meetingas ve ry few individuals took the time anymore to have them.

I was shocked. I was taught that establishing a 1:1 relationship with the peopleon your team is critical to the pro j e c t’s success. This was the first time I’d heardanything like this about join-up meetings. I filed this feedback away.

Later I was talking to my project manager-mentor, and he indicated he had fin-ished his join-up meetings with eve ry person in his new organization. He alsoindicated his predecessor had conducted few, if any, join-up meetings.

Again, I was shocked. When I reflected on these two experiences, I re a l i zed a ve ryn e g a t i ve trend might be emerging in our fast-paced, schedule-driven, 500-e-mail-p e r - d a y, cell-phone-ringing, 24/7-communication, multi-tasking work lives: NOFACE T I M E !

Face time is what you spend with people to talk about the project you are work-ing on, their expectations of you, your expectations of them, your hierarc h y’sexpectations about each of you, and/or—last but certainly not least—what eachof you plans on achieving during the project. A 1:1, face-to-face, join-up meet-ing is the only way I know to build solid trust between the project manager andthe team members and their hierarc h y. The project manager can then use theinformation gathered in these meetings to help develop the team stru c t u re anddynamics.

Join-up meetings are a big deal for me, and I rate them at the top of my meet-i n g - i m p o rtance meter. These are the meetings where I discover if an individual’ssuccess criteria are different than the team’s success criteria. Even though a per-son has agreed to the team’s criteria, they may actually be motivated by other cri-teria, which could negatively impact the project.

“T h e re is no I in team” is an axiom that applies to a project as much as any otherkind of team endeavo r. A project manager spends most of his or her time ande f f o rt managing/motivating individuals on the team to get in sync with the wholet e a m’s success criteria. The face-to-face join-up meeting is integral to under-standing each “I” in the team.


page 3 1

“A 1:1, face-to-face,join-up meeting is theonly way I know tobuild solid trustbetween the projectmanager and theteam members andtheir hierarchy. ”


W. Scott Cameron is CapitalSystems Manager for the Food& Beverage Global BusinessUnit of Procter & Gamble. Hehas been managing capitalprojects and mentoring othercapital management practition-ers for the past 20 years atProcter & Gamble within itsBeauty Care, Health Care,Food & Beverage, and Fabric& Home Care Businesses.

Another thing I’ve learned in my career is that no matter how well I think I knowpeople, if I don’t take the time to have a “f o r m a l” join-up meeting with them, andunderstand what is motivating them, it’s possible I may find out their expecta-tions are ve ry different than what I’ve assumed. For example, I was the pro j e c tmanager of a project in which the lead technical engineer and I had work e d

A P P L

Issue 7 F E ATURES: W. SCOTT C A M E R O N


The Join-Up Meeting (cont’d)


Join-up meetings are not only crucial for hardware integration, but also form

an important stage of team building, as Scott Cameron points out in his article.

together earlier in our careers. Since I had worked with him before, I didn’t feelthe need to “join up.” That was a big mistake.

This individual consistently committed to doing things on the project. I wasi m p ressed and felt he was showing great leadership. Howe ve r, as the project pro-g ressed I noticed another trait. The individual did not meet any of his commit-ments. This was having a negative impact on the project. Thus, I began takingresponsibility away from him and giving it to others to ensure the pro j e c t’s suc-cess.

After awhile, the individual and I had a belated join-up meeting. During thismeeting I learned his boss had said that he needed to demonstrate leadership andcommit to do more than his fair share of work on this project to be considere dfor promotion. The boss failed to point out that meeting his commitments wasalso crucial to being promoted.

This example is a continual reminder for me of the importance of the join-upmeeting. Had I known what his success criteria we re, I certainly would havere e valuated his role on the project, or at the least talked with him about how bestto synchro n i ze his personal success criteria with the team’s .

A P P L

F E ATURES: W. SCOTT C A M E R O N


The Join-Up Meeting (cont’d)

page 3 3

A P P L

Issue 7 F E AT U R E S

Wi l l p o w e rby Terry Little

I am struck by how often failure is blamed on a lack of discipline. You often hearlosing coaches cite this as the reason for a big loss. I don't recall the last time Ih e a rd one say that his team lost a game because of his players' lack of skill. I thinka bre a k d own in discipline is also one of the key reasons why program and pro j-ect management teams fail to meet expectations.

The first program I ever managed had a clear set of priorities. I understood themandate, and so did eve ryone else on the team. We set an ambitious schedule ands t a rted to work ferve n t l y. Not too long into the program the customer wanted tok n ow what performance he was going to get. I replied by categorizing the per-formance parameters into three bins:

1. Pe rformance you will get.

2. Pe rformance you may get.

3. Pe rformance that there's no way you will get.

Did that cause an upro a r. The customer demanded eve rything in the second binbe moved to the first, and most eve rything in the third bin be moved to the sec-ond. My immediate impulse was to agree, but I managed to ove rcome that. Inmy heart, I knew that we would never meet the already ambitious schedule if wehad to deliver more performance. "No" was my answe r.

" If you don't give me better performance, then I am going to get the pro g r a mcancelled," the customer argued. Fine. He attempted to carry through on hist h reat, but senior management, to their credit, came down on my side.

The program turned out to be a huge success, but the result would have beenlargely different had senior management or I failed to maintain discipline. Si n c ethen I can't tell you how many times saying "no" has kept the programs I'vemanaged on track.

Program and project managers have to be vigilant about maintaining discipline.So many temptations exist. De velopment programs are a really good example ofh ow this occurs. When using a cost reimbursable approach to pay for them, wecan be sorely tempted to plan as we go, excusing ourselves because of the riski n vo l ved, or because we did not think we had enough time to plan adequately.Government is particularly susceptible to this kind of behavior. Watch out!




Terry Little is currently thehead of the Air Force's Centerfor Acquisition Excellence.Before that he was theProgram Director for the JointAir-to-Surface Standoff Missile(JASSM). He is one of DoD'smost seasoned program man-agers. He entered the A i rForce in 1967 and served onactive duty until 1975. In 1997he was promoted to the gradeof SES.

Re q u i rements grow. Wo rk scope grows. Cost and schedule grow.

C o m m e rcial companies only rarely use a cost reimbursement approach wheni n vesting in risky projects. Rather, they do fixed-price, incremental investing, andput a high premium on detailed planning. They place a fixed amount of moneyinto a re s e a rch or development project with the expectation (but not a guaran-tee) of a certain result. Pe r i o d i c a l l y, or when the money is gone, they look atinterim results (compared to plan) and decide whether to invest more funds. T h i smakes for a ve ry disciplined approach that program and project managers in gov-ernment can learn from.

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F E ATURES: T E R RY L I T T L E


Willpower (cont’d)

page 3 5

A performance test firing of a U.S. Air Force Expendable Launch Vehicle proj-

ect. Not the same kind of performance Terry Little is talking about in his arti-

cle, but there is probably just as much bang for the buck in his suggestions

about how to maintain project discipline.

Successful program and project managers understand the value of maintainingdiscipline on a project. Being disciplined is not easy, and re q u i res strong willpow-e r. It pays to always be thinking about key decisions where yo u ' ve either acted tomaintain discipline or allowed a bre a k d own to occur. The payoff is a betterunderstanding of why discipline is important to your project and what your ro l eis in fostering a disciplined attitude for the entire project team.

“The program turnedout to be a huge suc-cess, but the resultwould have beenlargely different hadsenior managementor I failed to maintaind i s c i p l i n e . ”

A P P L

Issue 7




Mary Chiu has been aProgram Manager in theSpace Department at theJohns Hopkins A p p l i e dPhysics Lab (APL) since 1985.She has managed a variety ofprograms, including the A P LUltraStable Oscillator pro-grams for the Navy (NRL) andN A S A (Mars Observer, EUVE,Cassini), Altimeters for theNavy (SPINSAT), and NASAspacecraft (ACE, CONTO U R ) .She is currently ProjectManager for the CONTO U Rmission, which is part ofN A S A’s Discovery Program.

Mary Chiu and her “hot” team from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics

Laboratory built the Advanced Composition Explorer spacecraft for NASA.

Instruments on the spacecraft continue to collect data that inform us about

w h a t ’s happening on our most important star, the Sun.

P R A C T I C E S

Hot Meetingsby Mary Chiu

A colleague walked by my office one time as I was conducting a meeting. T h e rewe re about five or six members of my team present. The colleague, a man whohad been with our institution (The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, a.k.a.APL) for many years, could not help eave s d ropping. He said later it sounded likewe we re having a raucous argument, and he wondered whether he should standby the door in case things got out of hand and someone threw a punch.

I laughed when he told me this, and he looked even more puzzled. It was busi-ness as usual in there I tried to explain. “We we re exchanging ideas.”

He didn’t get it. That was not the way meetings in our organization we re typi-cally conducted.

In the early 90s, my team at APL was building the spacecraft for the NASAAd vanced Composition Ex p l o rer (ACE) project. It wasn’t exactly a new endeav-

or for APL to be building a spacecraft, we had built plenty before for NASA; butthis was a team of mostly young people, highly motivated, extremely intense anddying for the opportunity to be part of something as exciting as a NASA mission.Our energy came into full flower at meetings.

As for the tendency of team members to express oneself, well, loudly, I didn’t onlycondone this behavior… I encouraged it. I said up front to eve ryone on the team,“ Meetings are an occasion to voice your opinion and get your views on the table.We want to debate all points of view, and if that means raising your voice to beh e a rd then you had that permission.” The volume was just a by p roduct of hav-ing that many voices contributing to the discussion. It got loud because peoplefelt they had to raise their voice a notch—if not several notches—to be heard. Myo b j e c t i ve was just getting people to talk. When decisions have to be made, Ib e l i e ve people must speak up. Living with bad decisions is one thing, but I can-not live with a bad decision because somebody has not come forth with impor-tant information. Silence, as far as I’m concerned, is consent.

Because there we re so many voices competing, it was easy for an outsider to think ourmeetings we re unstru c t u red. But just because there was a lot of noise didn’t mean theywe re unstru c t u red meetings. I always had an agenda, and before the meeting I’d sendit out. Even if the meetings occurred impromptu, at the beginning of the meeting I’dalways say to the effect, “By the end of this meeting we need to do this.”

Even though it may have sounded like we we re yelling at each other, we liked onea n o t h e r, and we knew each other’s habits good and bad. We didn’t think of our-s e l ves as yelling at each other. What distressed my colleague who stood outsidethe door was that he assumed if people we re raising their voices at each other theymust be fighting. Nobody was fighting. T h e re was enough trust and re s p e c tamong team members that we understood it was okay to express ourselves in thisw a y. The volume reflected the passion in people’s hearts, the comfort level thatexisted among us. I’m not saying that passion can only be expressed this way. I’msaying this was one way we expressed ours.

Understand we didn’t maintain a feve red pitch throughout the entire meeting.Once we got all the ideas on the table, then we would sort through them in a moreo rderly fashion to determine how best to approach a specific issue. We tried, andwe re successful most of the time, to arrive at a consensus. Some people we re notalways happy with the final decision, and sometimes later they we re proven right,but at the end of the meeting people accepted decisions and we re willing to move

A P P L

PRACTICES: MARY C H I U


Hot Meetings (cont’d)

page 3 7

on because the issue had been aired, all points of view discussed. No one cameback later on and said, “Well, I had something to say that never got heard.”

So often we expect one person to be the leader in a meeting, and that’s usuallythe project manager, taking the pulse of the gro u p, asking for input—but notreally giving up the floor. A lot of times that person just gets what he or shewants. Rare it is then when someone is willing to stand up and play the De v i l’sAd vocate, which is a critical function on any project team. This is how you testideas and give them the opportunity to prove their merit.

It was re m a rkable to me how deeply people we re thinking through situations andp roblems because they we re expected to voice their opinions. With eve ryo n eexpected to talk through an issue from his or her own point of view, assessing theimpact of what was up for consideration, I have no doubt we steered clear ofmany wrong turns we could have made on this pro j e c t .

Our ACE team was a hot gro u p, to invoke the language that is fashionable today,although we never thought of ourselves in those terms. It was just our modusoperandi. The tenor of the discussion got loud and volatile at times, but I pre f e rto think of it as animated, robust, or just plain collaborative .

Tips On How To Lead Productive Hot Meetings

• Limit the number of attendees. Hot meetings generate a comfortable amount of heat

for me when the number of attendees is small. At most 5-7 people. With too many

people there, you risk creating too much noise. Also, my meetings tend to be the

most productive when the attendees represent complementary disciplines.

• Spontaneity should be a high priority. Yes, you want to have an agenda, and cer-

tainly you may feel you need to accomplish something specific by the end, but at the

same time be open to letting the meeting unfold naturally out of the discussion.

• Listening is important. Encourage everyone at the meeting to listen to what other

people are saying. You want people to examine their own ideas as they hear others

express theirs.

• For hot meetings to be effective, the group must function as a cohesive team who trust

one another and share a belief that they are mutually responsible for project results. A

group of people who don't feel dependent upon each other is a committee, not a team.

A P P L

Issue 7 PRACTICES: MARY C H I U


Hot Meetings (cont’d)


I N T E RV I E W

A P P L

ASK Talks with W. Scott Cameron

Scott Ca m e ro n is the Capital Systems Manager for the Food & Be ve r a g eGlobal Business Unit of Procter & Gamble, and has been managing capitalp rojects and mentoring other project managers for the past 20 years at Pro c t e r& Gamble within its Beauty Care, Health Care, Food & Be verage, and Fa b r i c& Home Care Businesses. Scott also has been an ASK feature writer sinceVolume One. He re at ASK we consider Scott a dear friend, a generous col-league, and a great story t e l l e r. We are all too happy to provide a venue for hiswit and wisdom. He and his family live in Cincinnati, Oh i o.

A S K : Tell me about a project that has had an enduring impact on you?

Ca m e ro n : The project I look back on with probably the most pride was my firstmajor project. It was a multi-site, five-plant project wherein the first plant start -up was 18 weeks after funding and the fifth startup date was 26 weeks after fund-ing. Only two of the sites we re identified at the time we re c e i ved funding, andnone of the process and packing equipment had been ord e red. Two things aboutthis project had a huge impact on me. First, it gave me the courage to be account-able for the decisions I made, as there was no time to second-guess myself.Se c o n d l y, it taught me that eve ry day of a project's life is important and you needto get the most out of each day.

A S K : You met the schedule?

Ca m e ro n : We did. I remember sitting in a hotel room with a pad of paper anddrawing up the project's critical path schedule and deciding what things had tobe done and the milestone completion dates the project team had to meet. I thencalled my project manager-mentor and re v i ewed my thought process andassumptions. He listened to my plan, questioned me about it, and said, "If yo ucan meet all your milestone dates, you can make your schedule." He also told methat meeting this challenge was no easy feat but could be done with some major"mountain mov i n g . "

A S K : It is interesting to hear you did it with a pencil and paper, especially forsomething that I imagine was awfully complex. Do you ever use computer pro-grams, like Mi c rosoft Project, to do your scheduling?

Ca m e ro n : A lot of times when I talk to people about doing schedules, they askme what scheduling program I use. To be quite honest, I use a pencil and paper


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“The project managermust motivate theteam based on thep r o j e c t ’s unique chal-lenges, the teamm e m b e r s ’ e x p e r i e n c elevel, and the projects c h e d u l e . ”

I N T E RV I E W

most of the time to sketch out the critical path as I see it, which in an electro n i cage probably says I'm an old fogy. The schedule is just a tool to align the pro j e c tteam to what they have to do by when in order to be successful. How you pre p a reor draw the schedule is more a philosophical debate because there are many goods o f t w a re programs. The key is getting your project team members to be honest asto how long their work is going to take and how much time the schedule willa l l ow them to accomplish their tasks. W h e n e ver I put together an initial scheduleI work right to left (start-up to today) versus left to right (today to startup date).When you ask people how long something is going to take, their response alwaysresults in the initial schedules being two to three times longer than the time yo uh a ve. That's why I believe if it's a six-week or two-year schedule, eve ry day mat-ters and aligning the team to this fact early in the life of a project will help insureits success. When you start off on a two-year project, you tend to feel like noth-ing is restricting the schedule at that point, but those initial days are days whicha re hard to re c over or ve ry expensive to re c over later in the project's life.A S K : Is it different motivating a team when the schedule is six weeks as opposedto two years?

A P P L

Issue 7


ASK Talks with W. Scott Cameron (cont’d)


“Part of your job (as project manager),” says Scott Cameron, “is to figure out

how to mold the team to meet the success criteria of the project.”

I N T E RV I E W

Ca m e ro n : Each team takes on its own personality. The Project Manager mustm o t i vate the team based on the project's unique challenges, the team members'experience level, and the project schedule. With that said, I believe, it is far eas-ier to motivate a team with a short schedule because people re a l i ze eve ryday isi m p o rtant and there isn't as much time for divergent thought processes. This isone of the things I find exciting about being a project manager. You never re a l l yh a ve the same team, same schedule, or same project scope twice in a row. Eachp roject team and their re s p e c t i ve hierarchy have a different experience andk n owledge base to manage. Pa rt of your job is to figure out how to mold the teamto meet the success criteria of the project.

A S K : Tell me about one of the more challenging experiences yo u ' ve had try i n gto motivate a team.

Ca m e ro n : I once worked on a project where I was "thrown in" at the last minuteto replace the project manager who requested to be taken off the assignment. Wehad six weeks from when I arrived at the site to complete engineering, constru c-tion and start up the project. We had completed only 20% of the constru c t i o n ,and the remaining 80% was extremely complicated. I had to immediately step inand get eve ryone to start working together to meet this ve ry aggre s s i ve, if notunattainable, schedule. To add to the challenge, the various functional personnelon the team hated one another. I sat down with each functional leader on a one-on-one basis and said, "Ok a y, so how do you view your situation and your ro l e ,and what is it going to take to get us to start-up 6 weeks from now?" It wasn'tt h reatening, but it was like I had to say, "My job here is to lead us to start-up insix weeks. Are you with me?" The key in this case was getting people aligned inmeeting the schedule and finding out what was motivating the team's dysfunc-tional behavior. They may not have liked the end date, they would tell me all thereasons why they couldn't achieve perfection, but once we we re aligned they we reable to start working together. In the end, we started up within 8 weeks insteadof the 6 weeks.

A S K : One-on-one communication proved to be the magic formula?

Ca m e ro n : It wasn't exactly magic, but yes. The project manager is seen as thesingle point of contact, and I had to quickly get to know people on the team andwhat was motivating them. When yo u ' re the project manager you are going tospend a lot of time with these people. Best to understand what is making them"tick" early in the project's life. One thing I should add. You also have to under-

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“ If the hierarchy is notwell informed, thenyou will have a prob-lem regardless of howwell your team isf u n c t i o n i n g . ”

I N T E RV I E W

stand the system you work in and how the components are supposed to workwith one another. A long time ago I had a boss who said, "When I assign a pro j-ect manager, I want to make sure she or he knows eve ry way possible to defeatthe system and the processes we have in place." The point being if you thor-oughly understand the environment you work in, you can understand how eachsystem will impact your project. Thus, you can help yourself see and eliminatef u t u re bottlenecks the team may encounter. In the first project I've talked about,I understood how the company's systems worked. I took apart my schedule andsaid here are the bottlenecks we will encounter, and then I took steps to elimi-nate them. That was a major reason why we met the schedule.

A S K : How can you tell when a team is really functioning well together?

Ca m e ro n : For one thing, there is a lot of good communication. You see peoplestopping each other in the hall, they are active, they are animated, they are re s o l v-ing things, they are keeping you informed, but they are pretty much makingmost of the decisions on their own to meet the success criteria. They feel empow-e red and show it!

A S K : That must be nice. How then does your role as project manager change inthat case?

Ca m e ro n : You spend more time with the hierarchy making sure their needs arebeing met and they are knowledgeable of the work their people are doing to makethe project successful. You should also be insuring that the hierarchy is takingtime to re c o g n i ze their organization's good work. If the hierarchy is not we l linformed, then you will have a problem re g a rdless of how well your team is func-tioning.

A S K : Is this like running interf e rence for the team so upper management does-n't get in their hair?

Ca m e ro n : So rt of, but let's be careful here. T h e re are times where you need torun interf e rence because you want to keep the team focused, but most of the timethe team needs to understand their hierarchy and their needs. You also need tog i ve the project team a forum to "strut their stuff" for their bosses. You cert a i n-ly don't want the team to think it is only the project manager who interfaces withh i e r a rc h y. I don't want my team members to get burned or crushed by their hier-a rchy in re v i ews, but I'm okay if they get "singed." So while I would agree at

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Issue 7




“By the way, goodproject managers atany stage of theircareers should bewilling to be singed. ”

I N T E RV I E W

times you need to shelter the project team, they have to learn their hierarchy isintegral to the success of their projects and sometimes have different expectationsthan the project team may assume. Isolating the team from interfacing with hier-a rchy would be the worst thing I could do.

A S K : Describe a situation where somebody got singed, and how you knew it was-n't a serious burn.

Ca m e ro n : How about something that happened to me. Early in my engineeringc a re e r, I was the technical engineer on a project. My boss and I had a disagre e-ment on what technical scope should be installed. He had his position and I hadmine. Since I was leading the hierarchical technical re v i ew, he allowed me thef o rum to present my case and he presented his. As the smoke began rising aro u n dme during my technical presentation, I learned a valuable lesson about the hier-a rc h y. Lu c k i l y, my boss had a fire extinguisher handy. I just got singed and notb u r n e d .

A S K : What do people say to you after you let them get singed?

Ca m e ro n : Sometimes they come back and say I was right, or come back and sayI was kind of right. They rarely come back and say I was wrong. By the way, goodp roject managers at any stage of their careers should be willing to be singed. Noone is immune to the fire. But if yo u ' ve been doing this long enough, you under-stand that getting singed is necessary to your growth and to challenge the statusq u o.

A S K : I remember hearing you speak once at a conference about how rew a rd i n git was for you to be a mentor to young project managers. What is it that you getout of mentoring?

Ca m e ro n : As I've gotten older, I've started to wonder, "Where are the next gen-eration project managers going to come from?" I think about how I have grow nt h roughout my career and can talk about the projects I've worked on, but whenI get down to the root cause of my growth and development the most import a n tfactor has been the people who managed and coached me and let me get singedand challenged me. Individual managers had a profound impact on me. As I lookback, I can see how this boss taught me how to write proposals. This mentortaught me financial aspects and cash flow of the company. This peer focused meon schedules. This one focused me on team dynamics. This one taught me how

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“The last thing I wantto do is clone “littleScotts” who can carryout my ideas aboutproject managementwithout thinking. ”

I N T E RV I E WIssue 7

to listen and not immediately react. It's a collection of people, and I feel its partof my job to instill these learnings to others as others invested in me.

A S K : How much of mentoring is just listening?

Ca m e ro n : A lot. Project managers don't have many avenues to vent their fru s-trations or brainstorm ideas to improve their projects because of the demands ontheir time. They can vent to spouses or loved ones, but that's usually not ve ryhealthy and, probably in the long run, somewhat destru c t i ve to their personall i ves. They can vent to their bosses, but there is the risk their bosses will see themas weak and wonder, "Did I put the right person on the job?" They can talk tot h e m s e l ves, but then the people in the white lab coats may come around forthem. So as I look at myself as a mentor, the major part of the job is to just lis-ten. What I may have dealt with 10 - 20 times in my care e r, they are dealing withfor the first time, and want to discuss it.

A S K : Is there anything in particular you are listening for?

Ca m e ro n : I let them talk for 10-15 minutes and at the end of it I say, "Well, letme play back what I heard, and then lets talk about what you want to do." A largep e rcent of the time they just wanted to vent or brainstorm concepts/ideas and tok n ow that other people have experienced similar things. When you say, "Ye p, thatis pretty typical for projects like this," that generally makes them feel better.Sometimes we will discuss what the person wants to do to solve a problem andother options they may want to consider. Again, I am a re s o u rce and mentor whois trying to help the person grow and be successful. I don't see myself as beingt h e re to provide answers to their eve ry problem. The last thing I want to do isclone "little Scotts" who can carry out my ideas about project management with-out thinking.

A S K : Yo u ' ve been at Procter and Gamble about 30 years, right?

Ca m e ro n : Ac t u a l l y, 31.

A S K : Ok a y, 31. What do you re g a rd as the biggest milestone of your career?

Ca m e ro n : The biggest milestone was the birth of our triplet daughters Laura,Beth and Caroline--but I guess you mean pro f e s s i o n a l l y.

A P P L




I N T E RV I E W

A S K : Yes, I was thinking pro f e s s i o n a l l y.

Ca m e ro n : I think the answer to the question is probably I haven't done it ye t .I'd like to believe the best assignment or challenge is still in front of me. Si n c ethe girls are now 10, I figure I've got another 13 years of work to find out if I'mright.

A S K : And if they go on to graduate school, forget it. You may never see re t i re-ment.

Ca m e ron: Yeah, but I can live with that.

A P P L



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