posted on Friday, February 29, 2008 2:41 PM by AnjaliSastry

Do you really have to think of it all ahead of time?

This week we had an interesting discussion about how much time and effort we should spend planning and hypothesizing about what might go wrong with the project you are working on. As with workplanning, there's a tradeoff between investing in upfront work versus moving into action mode. You can waste valuable time, and actually solidify commitment to a not-very-good plan, by investing in too much detailed preparation and fine-grained mapping of steps. And you could drive yourselves nuts with group sessions designed to ferret out every possible risk to your project. So, beware the paralysis of over-analysis!

Yet I'd argue that a bias for action may be a more likely challenge. When it comes to work planning, most students are pretty good at listing project tasks and timelines. Where I often see folks fall short is in figuring out how the team can keep tabs on how much it is accomplishing in terms of concrete progress towards its goals. Notice that I said goals and not deliverables. Attention to goals enables you to identify the points at which, even if you make progress towards your deliverables, you are not achieving what you set out to accomplish.

The question of progress towards goals connects to another theme that's come up of late: what are the best indicators that will help you to monitor where you stand? Perhaps this is the most important discussion to be having at the early stages of a project, and it links to the questions of potential risks and predictable surprises, too. If you make sure you've listed at least a few of the likely problem areas or failure modes for your team project, then you'll be able to talk about what you think would be a good set of indicators that would allow you to assess whether this potential nightmare is, in fact, going to take place. So this is one set of progress indicators that are invaluable for your team to consider ahead of time. For instance, if your external partner's level of commitment to the project is a potential problem, then you may agree to keep tabs on their responsiveness to your communications, and to track their comments and questions during interactions. At team meetings, a quick check-in question could address partner responsiveness as well as their expressed concerns and questions. If you're seeing a pattern that may suggest worsening commitment, you'll need to try something new.

So use a conversation about predictable surprises to generate a list of potential indicators that things are going wrong. And then, of course, talk over with your team what you want to do about it, and at what point a response is warranted.

Every one of us, and every team, may have a natural tendancy to invest too much effort into one phase of your project at the cost of its other elements. If you know that you've been blindsided by predictable surprises in the past, then spend more time thinking about, discussing, and addressing the risks. If you tend to be slow to take action and instead make lots of plans and then contingency plans, perhaps now is the time to try taking more actions, setting aside time to revisit your plans once you've taken more steps.

When we looked at predictable surprises we found ourselves worrying that the list of things that could go wrong is infinitely long. But at the same time the workplace is full of people who can tell you on day one of a new project exactly how it will fail, and they will often be right.

The bottom line is that this tension between thinking and acting is here to stay. In many ways, as Minztberg and Gosling argue in a paper describing the orientations and skillsets fundamental to mangement, it is a fundamental tension in the life of any manager. They frame the tradeoff as one between reflection and action, but it really is the same thing we've been talking about:
Everything that every effective manager does is sandwiched between action on the ground and reflection in the abstract. Action without reflection is thoughtless; reflection without action is passive. Every manager has to find a way to combine these two mind-sets - to function at the point where reflective thinking meets practical doing.

Jonathan Gosling and Henry Mintzberg, “The Five Minds of a Manager,” Harvard Business Review Nov2003 p54-63.

Comments

# re: Do you really have to think of it all ahead of time?

Sunday, March 02, 2008 11:40 AM by Kyle Maner
While the subject at hand is more about predictable surprises, I want to focus on only one small part of that: the idea that “wasting” five minutes now can save so many more minutes in the future. When I think about the truth behind that statement, I also tend to think more about norms – specifically, personal norms – and how that relates to the efficiency of work.

I put wasting in quotation marks above because I think that many people do consider time wasted when getting everyone on board with an idea, getting people’s heads wrapped around the true problem at hand – rather than what they think the problem is – or even taking breaks when brain capacity, emotional capacity, or physical capacity has been reached. I’ve learned, especially lately, that is this time is not “wasted” then more much more time truly will be wasted later.

When I think about the projects I have been a part of, and when I think about the project for this class, I find that it is so much easier to see those predictable surprises in hindsight – a point that was made in class. The predictable surprises I can see ahead of time, though, are the ones that affect me, rather than the team. For example, as a person who runs almost every day, only taking one day off at a time, if I suddenly take two, or worse, three!, days off, I can tell a major difference in my academic, personal, and professional performance. Therefore, a predictable surprise is falling apart on a project if I deem I’m too busy to exercise.

But this thought leads directly into the “wasting” time trap. While members of a team might deem my taking 30 minutes of a time out to exercise might think I am “wasting” time, when, in reality, if I don’t take that time, I truly will be wasting time later because I am not functioning at my full potential. Therefore, taking to time to exercise becomes a personal norm.

Moving on to personal norms, I overheard a conversation last week in which one member of team, who happens to be very close friend so mine, said to her teammates, and I’m paraphrasing:

I’m sorry, guys. I went to bed at 10:30 last night so I didn’t get the emails you sent at 1 a.m. or the emails you sent at 2 a.m. asking where I was and why I hadn’t responded. I normally go to bed really early and get up really early so I’m not on email at 1 a.m., but I’ll get a smart phone this week so that I’ll wake up when you send emails really late so that I can be more responsive.

Overhearing this interaction really upset me. I feel like one of my friend’s personal norms is going to bed early, getting up early, and maximizing her efficiency based on her biological time schedule. I think that as long as this type of thing is communicated to a team, team members should respect how people operate. Personally, I have had to have very frank conversations with people regarding boundaries and work-life balance – but it all relates back to personal norms and effective communication.

While perhaps my whole commentary does not relate directly to predictable surprises, I think the indirect correlations definitely exist. I hope that I continue to learn how best to communicate with a team the norms by which I work to maximize my success. I also hope to be able to extract those personal norms from other teammates to, in the end, maximize the effectiveness of each and every team on which I work.

# re: Do you really have to think of it all ahead of time?

Sunday, March 02, 2008 11:04 PM by Naomi Cohen
I think predicting what might go wrong allows you to set up structures in order to mitigate the chance of failure. But I also think it serves another purpose: to determine realistic goals.

If you can determine what might be the pitfalls in your project, you can also assess what you actually might be able to accomplish, rather than what you could ideally accomplish.

For example, one of my clients when I was consulting was a local public high school. I set up my workplan to accomplish high impact goals. I was very excited about working with this school and I thought that given my interest and designated work time, I would be able to accomplish what I set out to do and make a positive change in the school. What I didn't account for was the bureaucracy that is inherent in any public institution. I spent a good portion of my time convincing teachers to speak with me, rather than doing the analysis and implementation of work that I thought could the benefit the school.

This was a very frustrating experience because I felt my time wasn't spent as productively as it could have been and that I would not be able to accomplish the goals I had set out for myself. While I now look at that project as successful, I think had I predicted the pitfalls of institutional bureaucracy earlier, I would have set more realistic goals and felt more satisfied with the project while I was working on it.

However, there is a downside to being able to predict what might go wrong too: you might limit yourself by having an upper bound on what you think you can accomplish.

# re: Do you really have to think of it all ahead of time?

Monday, March 03, 2008 10:00 AM by Ellen T
I am definitely guilty of having a bias towards action - probably the disaster responder in me. What I'd like to do is learn to build good team habits into the margins of regular team activity. For example, opening with a quick check-in on team members, and closing with a review of action items and next steps. When I was in working in Louisiana helping set up a massive housing recovery program in a short period of time, the Program Executive insisted on daily 8 am meetings. We took 30 minutes to review what we were doing that day and introduce new team members. After a week or two, it was as though my day was never quite the same without our boss telling us to "be safe out there." It also became a great source of team spirit when the whole operation was under attack.

I'd like to focus this semester on integrating team building into the margins of regular team operations and developing these habits. If anyone has best practices or ideas to share, please do!
ETT

# re: Do you really have to think of it all ahead of time?

Monday, March 03, 2008 10:39 AM by Amy
I think I am guilty of having a bias towards planning and analysis paralysis. I find this to be especially the case in team projects at Sloan.

I have found that all too often that teams spend the majority of their time planning and replanning in the early part of the semester - while people don't have as many time constraints. The teams that I have been on tend to leave the "heavy lifting" to later in the semester when assignments are piling up and their days are filled with meetings for classes, career, or clubs.

I would like to hear from the rest of the class how they have successfully navigated away from this problem and how they have dealt with team members (in non-class projects) who seem unable to keep to their oligations due to school work or career obligations.