Do Nothing!

I'm working so hard, but can't seem to make a difference!  I'm running at top speed, but don't seem to be getting anywhere!  According to Keith Murnighan I might be trying to hard, doing too much.  In fact, if we are going to accomplish bigger things, we may need to actually Do Nothing.

The premise of this easy read is that the skills and instincts that got us moved into newer, bigger roles will ultimately kill our chances of succeeding in them.  I've seen this happen in my own career, and I've seen it in others' as well.  I was once promoted to lead the team I had previously been a part of.  How was I going to make this work?  How could I earn their respect and trust as their leader?  I chose to show them that I was still "one of them" - that no work was beneath me, that I would still work as hard as any of them.  Isn't that "servant leadership" after all?  But my team now needed something different.  If I would provide the leadership they needed they could more than handle all of the projects, tasks and deadlines that came their way.  I made a lot of mistakes as a new-minted leader, many of them rooted in my failure to change the way I thought and worked.

From the years of experience I have since had, I know Murnighan is right.  To succeed - to give my company and clients the greatest benefit - I need to do less and less.  This is still difficult for me - I still derive tremendous satisfaction from working in the trenches with a team to deliver a solution of some sort.  But Covenant needs lots of good Project Managers and Analysts, not just one, and they're not going to materialize if I am focusing only on my own stuff.

I still need to work on solution delivery, but I also need to help Covenant achieve "leverage" - ("a high ratio of juniors to seniors" - see Managing the Professional Services Firm, David Maister.)  Few organizations can afford to have only senior-level employees: instead they must focus on developing new talent that can do much of the work, and do it at much earlier stages of their career.

Contrary to his book's title Murnighan is not advocating laziness, rather that we work very hard on different things.  When we work on the right stuff we will make a difference, and we will get somewhere - bringing others along with us as we go.

The rest of the book seemed more like a potpourri of advice for leaders - some of it very good - and all of it connected in some way to the theme of doing nothing.

Closing a Project

Ending a project cleanly is easier said that done.  People are rolling off the project and getting pulled into the next thing... frankly, we all just want to move on.  So how do we make sure that this important part of every project gets the attention it needs?

At Covenant our projects are approached in phases.  We always start with a planning phase and we always end with a "Transition" phase.  (What happens in between depends on Agile vs. Waterfall.)  The Transition phase begins when the solution is turned over to the client for testing and validation.  It ends when the client accepts the solution and starts using it.

We all understand the value of User Acceptance Testing - the first part of this last phase - and we strive to ensure that things will go well when someone pulls the "go live switch."  However, after that things get a little fuzzy... we have good intentions of closing out neatly, but that does not appear as important as getting the next thing going.  "Hey, we finished the project on time!"  And that's, that.

Part of the problem is that we often don't clearly define what needs to be done.  Put together a budget summary?  Meet with the client?  Sure, that makes sense... but there is much more.  In fact, I've been focusing on this aspect of our own methodology lately, defining what a project audit should look like at the close of a project, and I was surprised at how many things needed to get done.

Below is my scorecard checklist - take a look and let me know if a) That is helpful to you, and b) If you do anything that I haven't covered.

Schedule	Did we finish within the approved schedule.
Budget	Did we finish within the approved budget.
Change Requests	All changes in scope, schedule, and budget are documented, approved and online.
Requirements	Finalized and uploaded
Technical Documents	Finalized and uploaded
Technical Audit	Has the architecture and technical design been finalized and reviewed?
Client Budget Summary	Summary sent to client showing original budget, revised budget (listing CR’s) actual cost.
Client Project Close Meeting	Review deliverables from SOW/Charter. Confirmed acceptance from Client.
Return Client Property	Return badges, confidential documents etc. to client
Conduct Lessons Learned	(This will be a topic for another day.)
Archive Project	We use Project Server for everything - the project is moved out of Project Server and into a SharePoint archive.
Provide Feedback	Written performance feedback on all team members sent to employees and managers.
Notify Client Manager	Our Client Managers work on surveys, white papers etc.
Turnover to Support
Project Summary	Sent to executives etc.
Team Recognition	Team celebration, individual recognition