(I had promised to keep these Blogs short, which my spouse so purposefully pointed out to me after the last one; it was a tad overkill creating a glazed-over look on his face - so I cut it in half. This is probably "Blog suicide" but since I'm trying to keep this an active post for students taking my Fundamentals of Management courseI decided I'd better edit this particular post - my apologies to those who have been reading and are confused by this recent edit.)
WM #9.5: How to avoid a train wreck - Plan Ahead!
Through the identification of "critical path" (often with the use of a Gantt chart), a manager defines one sequence of events that take the longest and cannot easily be reduced in size, speed, or time. In other words, what ensures that the project is accomplished safely, correctly and with the least amount of risk if things go wrong. An easy example to illustrate this process is envision constructing a skyscraper; the main structure or foundation must be completed first before any of the plumbing, dry wall, or windows can be installed, hung, or inserted. Henry L. Gantt was the first to develop this very simplistic idea in the form of a bar chart that lists activities and dates enabling projects to be accomplished by visualizing the project activity duration.
Understanding what takes precedence in a project to ensure that other's activities can take place either concurrently or right after one is accomplished.
In a complex society where work is accomplished not just by one person but many, this type of planning is paramount to project delivery and meeting business objectives while ensuring safety to the humans performing and receiving the new service or project. Especially in contemporary society where everything seems to be done YESTERDAY! Time is literally money in every aspect of business life and often corners are cut for the sake of reducing the amount of time to save on costs. This is wrong but often done in many instances of human economic development and a topic for another blog.
Why did this train drive through a tornado (see previous post)? Probably because they didn't consider the consequences (assessed risk) and maybe had never done it before (Train Engineer says, "We're heavy with umpteen cars weighing 15 tons apiece - a tornado won't be a problem"). I bet they'll never do that again! Now I gotta go change my shirt - I spilled grape koolaide (again, refer to last post)!
My kids always tease me that I can't keep a white shirt clean because of my preponderance to dribble whatever I eat or drink right on the front of it. It's called a shelf people! And for a buxom broad like me, well, it's an inevitable problem. My biggest (no pun intended) problem is being somewhere that I don't have a way to cover up, clean, or replace the offending shirt that has been the recipient of a recent DQ chocolate dip cone dribble or a dollop of mustard that has escaped from my Nathan's hot dog! So planning is everything and whoever invented those Tide Clean Stix should receive the Nobel Prize for invention and innovation! Whenever I go somewhere that requires some semblance of professionalism, I always plan to bring a sweater, jacket or - even better - a scarf; versatile, easily tucked away, and so many styles and designs to match a multitude of outfits. I KNOW that I will be needing something to cover any "oops" dribble if there is any beverage or food consumption in my future!
So you may be asking yourself, "what's this got to do with management?" Planning people! I repeatedly discuss this concept with students and how often managers are caught ill-prepared for difficult situations. While we cannot possibly plan for every contingency it is important to have every possible problem or mishap planned for with the hopes that it will NEVER happen. The above video illustrates a situation that likely many train engineers had hoped that they would never have to be confronted with but unfortunately, did! A tornado struck this train quickly and with incredible fierceness that serves as great YouTube fodder but think what the cost was to the train company and town for clean-up, recovery of equipment, loss of life and limb, and the logistics required to get the train track passable again. With all of the recent catastrophic weather conditions around the country (fires in SW, tornado in Springfield MA, flooding along the Mississippi) businesses must be prepared for every possible catastrophic scenario to keep their business afloat.
While working on a large project management assignment as a consultant, I was struck by the planning required to launch a complex, multi-layered, global information technology project. Included in this project was a vast number of human resources who worked to analyze, define, develop, test, and communicate a project of this size. Hundreds of people worked on their individual piece of the project puzzle while ONE incredible woman - the program manager and my boss - kept it moving. Her job was to orchestrate the entire process. I learned a lot from her and realized that while technology is a wonderful and powerful tool to accomplish the most mundane and tedious tasks, the number of people involved to ensure that it works correctly for the end-user (like you and me) is daunting! We consumers nearly subconsciously use technology to pay our taxes, purchase shoes, or check savings account balance.
With all this technological development, contingency factors of risk must be considered. What does that mean you may ask? The "what if" scenario. "What if" the organizational network fails or is not adequately stress tested for the deluge of users on April 14th and while uploading your taxes the US Government server crashes - Yikes! What if you find the perfect Agatha Ruiz de la Prada toddler shoes at half price (regularly $85.50) for your daughter on Zappos and the server fails to upload your credit card information? Not quite a catastrophe but seriously irritating! And all of the sudden you are seeing a sudden spike in your bank credit card balance but unable to confirm it through your bank's help line because they aren't able to track down where the transactions took place because their server is down? Lack of planning and foresight on the part of the business and it's developers is what has happened. While it may not seem a train wreck, it can make or break a business.
See the next blog WM #9.5: Planning ahead (The Critical Path)
My daughter just gave birth to my first grand child - Gavyn Lochlan. I had promised myself that when I started this blog that I would write weekly to ensure a sense of flow and responsibility to any readers. But life gets in the way and especially when you have kids - priorities lie with them. I was in the delivery room when my daughter gave birth to Gavyn and it was probably one of the most difficult experiences of my life. To be so helpless during a time of untold pain and excitement of childbirth. While my daughter had an epidural to alleviate the significant pain of the child birth (a medical miracle and we should all revere this procedure developed by John Bonica, MD the founding father of Pain Management!), she had been in labor for 18+ hours and was exhausted. All I wanted to do was take over this burden for her. As a mother who is both nurturing and authoritative - I often take over and this one instance I was completely helpless. While I could wipe her brow and give her encouraging words I was still helpless to her child-birth struggles. It was agony.
I realized after what seemed like a decade of pushing (probably only about 30 minutes) that I was NOT helping her. She needed someone to come in and take over a more objective and less invested role to coach her through these last few contractions to get this baby out! I was too nurturing with every cell in my body screaming "I'll take over!" It was time for a more "Quit your whining and get this baby OUT!" approach. My US Navy Chief husband is good at that but he wasn't there to take over (although I think he might have been traumatized watching his little girl push a baby OUT of her ... well you know).
I leaned close to her prior to next push and said, "Kels, I'm going to have the nurse come in and help you." At this point, I think she didn't really care who was there but I knew this was going to be hard for her to get over if I didn't tell her exactly what I was doing. I motioned for one of the other nurses to replace me at my daughter's bed side to encourage her through the next contraction. Her boyfriend was on her right side doing a phenomenal job of not trying to push and breath with her like I was. My empathy was at an all-time high and it was time to back off for the sake of my daughter's pleading, scared eyes. I know what you must be thinking: "How could you just leave her!?" Well I was doing more harm than good. Because as a mom I bring popsicles home during a bad case of the flu, lie on the bed after a nightmare, or come charging to the rescue after a minor fender bender; this was the one time I couldn't really help.
How often do we put outselves into a position of taking over when we really shouldn't. When instead we should and MUST step back and let others work through the pain. As parents we are programmed to pick up and comfort our kids after a semi-serious bicycle accident or a fall off the teeter totter but there will be moments when help is a hinderance, when they have to learn that we won't be there all the time to dust them off and kiss their pain away. This particular situation of my daughters first child birth experience may seem extreme as an example of management but it holds true for many of those "micromanagers" out there (and you KNOW who you are!) who feel they need to do EVERYTHING much to the chagrin of their subordinates! WE CANNOT GROW UNLESS WE EXPERIENCE PAIN!
Someone wrote or said, "Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain." And maybe that is why we try to take over when someone is trying to work out a problem or make a tough presentation that we authoritative and "can-do" managers accomplish in a manner of minutes because we know from past experiences the 'best' way to do things (ya right!). But what do others learn from us taking over and how do they grow if we don't allow them to experience some pain? Nothing except we'll take over - running ourselves ragged, running out of time to get our own work done, and resenting them in the end! So next time you get the urge to "push" for your subordinates in getting something done - don't! Let them experience and learn from the pain!
This blog is dedicated to my beautiful daughter Kelsey and her new baby boy!
