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-Why do almost 70% of projects experience some type of “Failure,” either partial or complete.

-Why do we train on tools and technologies and develop processes and still fail?

Why, when some of our project succeed, they don’t provide value to the organization?

Why am I having trouble finding project managers who can execute in a such a way as to prevent some of this failure?

DR. Harold Kerzner - See article from Huffing Post #1

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Harold Kerzner (Ph.D., MS, Engineering and MBA) is Senior Executive Director with International Institute for Learning, Inc. Dr. Kerzner is a globally recognized expert on project, program, and portfolio management, total quality management, and strategic planning and the author of the best-selling books about project management. Dr. Kerzner is the author of the best-selling textbooks: Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling and Controlling, now in its ninth edition, In Search of Excellence in Project Management, Applied Project Management and Strategic Planning for Project Management Using a Project Management Maturity Model, and his most recent book, Project Management Best Practices: Achieving Global Excellence. He has written over 140 book on engineering and project management.

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Clip: Jaws – we’re going to need a bigger boat: (http://cli.ps/NuSb)

Chapter 1: Projects in Crisis Chaos Report on project failure

Why do so many project fail?

Underperformance, Experienced vs. Effective PM

“When the going gets tough, they call in the sons of bitches.”

John L. Sullivan Sidebar

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Chapter

• 68% of projects fail in whole or in part. (Source: CHAOS Summary 2009, The Standish Group) (pg 14 Chart) Reasons for failure. Look at #9: Ownership – See Kerzner article No. 2.

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Harold Kerzner (Ph.D., MS, Engineering and MBA) is Senior Executive Director with International Institute for Learning, Inc. Dr. Kerzner is a globally recognized expert on project, program, and portfolio management, total quality management, and strategic planning and the author of the best-selling books about project management. Dr. Kerzner is the author of the best-selling textbooks: Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling and Controlling, now in its ninth edition, In Search of Excellence in Project Management, Applied Project Management and Strategic Planning for Project Management Using a Project Management Maturity Model, and his most recent book, Project Management Best Practices: Achieving Global Excellence. He has written over 140 book on engineering and project management.

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http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9243396/Healthcare.gov_website_didn_t_have_a_chance_in_hell_?pageNumber=1

• SEE COMPUTER WEEK Story – read highlight.

• 3,555 Projects * >$10M each = $35.5 Billion in Projects

• If 41.1% failed outright, that cost us $14.6 Billion!!!

• It’s not enough to be an experienced project manager. You have to be an effective project manager.

• What happens when the going gets tough?

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Chapter 2: The Bare-Knuckled Project Manager

SIDEBAR: MY STORY… How I go to this….

Start with Why – Simon Sinek

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Chapter 2: The Bare Knuckled Project Manager

• Anybody can walk up to the plate and swing a bat, but that doesn’t mean everybody can become a major league superstar. It takes talent, temperament, skill, training, experience, attitude, and aptitude to be the best.

Street fighter settles problems using the “the art of fighting without fighting”

THE BARE KNUCKLER IS Unafraid of conflict, Simple, direct and effective, Well disciplined, Well trained and versatile, and Moves forward consistently – incremental improvement through continual progress eventually reaches the designed goal

Combat is spontaneous and cannot be predicted but it can be controlled - Jeet Kune Do

• SETUP THE MOVIE CLIP : http://movieclips.com/57xJ-pulp-fiction-movie-the-wolf/ (Harvey Keitel)

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Chapter 3: The Three-Sided Table

HOW DO WE BECOME A BARE KNUCKLED PROJECT MANAGER? A WINSTON WOLF? Answer: we reframe our projects and we reframe ourselves.

Lets start with the Project:

Project manager is extracted from the team.

BKPM owns the Process not the outcome

Co-opt Risk is when the BKPM is compromised in the three sided table

Customer must own the outcome

BKPM owns the P&L

GREAT (Goals, Roles, Expectations, Attitudes, Time) model

Forcing the Customer

Power of Why Sidebar

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Lets start with the Project:

Project manager is extracted from the team.

BKPM owns the Process not the outcome

Co-opt Risk is when the BKPM is compromised in the three sided table

Customer must own the outcome

BKPM owns the P&L

GREAT (Goals, Roles, Expectations, Attitudes, Time) model

Forcing the Customer

Power of Why Sidebar

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Chapter 4: No Bullshit PM

NOW, LETS REFRAIM OURSELVES

Don’t drive carpet tacks with a sledge hammer

Honest broker

Triple constraint (driver, week constraint, middle constraint)

Apollo and the Tripple Constraints Sidebar

Establish the right process – Goal: A clear, concise statement of the end state must look like.

BKPM is the Outcome Advocate in an entrepreneurial endeavor.

BKPM = COO, running back, project owner, rule maker (breaker), WBS

Learning Customer = no clarity, plan must evolve or iterate = Directional Projects

Risk Management and Change Management

Plan – Do – Check - Act

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Chapter 5: Why Projects Fail — and How BKPM Prevents It

Force early failure – saves everyone time, money, energy

BKPM job in jeopardy when all he does is a job

Success is somewhat subjective; requires an argument for or rationalization of success. Standish is not wrong, but they miss a component: ownership of an entrepreneurial effort.

Failures are seldom one-dimensional

Darwinian Dynamic: real improvement achieved despite not achieving the stated goal.

Mistakes are the result of known risks (known knowns, known unknowns), requires insulations and mitigation planning

Execution does not need to be flawless, just good enough

Cognitive Bias masks what is clearly in front of you.

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Chapter 6: Becoming a Bare-Knuckled Project Manager

Here is how I learned BKPM (I’m not Nicolas Cage in this clip): Clip: Bangkok Dangerous http://cli.ps/jzHd

Limbic Learning (CLIP): Proper decision making in the face of stress results from limbic learning.

Forged, hardened, grace under pressure - Some PMs under stress learn the wrong responses. Cut and run, surrender.

Limbic training is core to BKPM (BKPMO) - Purely intellectual learning does not change behavior. Practice fighting under stress. Projects are a continuum of stress and unpredictability.

Cognitive Drivers tweak responses over time

Every BKPM goes through multiple rounds of stress and seasoning. BKPMO is a process of building on and reinforcing this. What I believe + Limbic training = Reaction to Stress.

Remember the Jaws clip – Every project starts out in that way for me.

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BKPM Zone / Inner BKPM: Not about ego, power, but results. Pursue results and achieve consistently and power will follow. Exhibits Humility – pressed into the service of others. Is Empathetic. Inverts customary models when necessary.

Master PMs pursues career growth; BKPMs pursue results and career growth follows

Master PMs pursue career stability; BKPMs pursue consistent achievement and career demand follows

Master PMs pursue resume success; BKPMs pursue wins.

THIS TIES BACK TO DR. KERZNER - - Managers no longer can keep us from pursuing this as a career path and our response to the refusal to grant us authority = We’ll use our tools for force them to do what is right.

BKPMs Reaction under Stress Needs to follow: Calm, Humility, Empathy, client service focused, how can I help my client, Right thing focused. What is the right thing to do for the customer. Right is what I believe based on a moral code, Analytical – what are the options that fit within what I believe. Here is where the Cognitive tools fit in.

Outcome is not me focused; it is them focused. Does my belief align with what I chose or what I do?

Talk about Access Portals as a tool and how we use this experience in our projects ….

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Assets: Generosity, Customer perspective, Empathy, Belief, Surrendering graciously when necessary , Transparency

Finding a Win-Win: Not always obvious, This is one of the fun parts of BKPM

Trust

Character Based Trust – derived from integrity and honesty

Competency Based Trust – derived from past performance

Prediction Based Trust – derived from ability to predict risk and mitigate

Triple Constraint Access Portals (I don’t like the name of this)

This is the ability to plan to take advantage of the weak constraint in a project

Three types of Access Portals

Advance Agreement with Customer on how much slippage of constraints is acceptable.

When a situation arises that upsets the project, BKPM steers the damage to the Weak Constraint, where it will do the least harm. Conflict is avoided because the BKPM articulated this strategy early in the project. It is a planned escape hatch.

Transparency in the use of resources and costs.

Strategy of Empathy – concerns how you use the access portals in a project. BKPM does not dodge responsibility; rather he simply employs a strategy that way previously created (prediction trust rises).

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Chapter 8: Kanz Dictum

Gene Kranz – Kranz Dictum: “Tough and Competent” problems and mistakes are inevitable and so the process is designed with that in mind.

Create a vision for the Process = as important as the customers vision for the outcome. We can dream.

A change in vision is not the same thing as a failure of a project

Recovery and Rescue is a separate project from the how the project initiated.

Eisenhower Grid – “what is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important”

Watch out for emotions. Here is where limbic learning really matters.

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Chapter 9: The Next Bout

Projects becoming initiatives.

S-M-A-R-T and S-M-A-R-T-E-R

Recovering Value, Formerly called lessons learned, but that’s BS – this is where we tweak our limbic responses. Focus on stressors of project and how we reacted.

The Iron Laws of Human Motivation

OODA loop – Observe, Orient, Decide, Act

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Chapter 10: Transforming the Project...and the Organization

OPTION: BLUE SKY – how to use the bkpm model to rebuild the PMO into a special forces team of project managers….

Road to Excellence

Customer and the BKPM

Technical Team and the BKPM

Organization and the BKPM

Real World and a Way of Life

Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr. Sidebar

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