Influence and Muckety Maps

I first became familiar with influence maps when I read about them on the Mind Tools website and it wasn't until last year that I really put it into practice.  It proved to be a very a useful technique to help me manage stakeholder relationships in my new project management role.

Whlist browsing the web today I came across a website called 'Muckety.com - Exploring the paths of power and influence' which actually maps out relationships between people and organisations doing some of the leg work for you.  Admittedly it is more of a novel way of viewing networks than true stakeholder management (although for political people there are indications as to whether someone supports or opposes the person) but it is pretty interesting none the less.  Today their front page poses the question Do ties between Apple, Google pose antitrust issues? with a muckety map showing what appears to me to be a possible conflict of interests with the directors... You can even create your own...fun stuff!

Creating accessible and accountable government in the US

I came across a post on CIO Insight.com called 'Obama's Triad takes on government IT'. In it the author Robert Otto talks about the big challenges facing the Obama administration’s CIO, CTO and CPO and goes on to put forward elements of a potential vision going forward over the coming years. It's pretty idealistic but sensible stuff. What I can't help wondering is if they actually achieve something like this whether the UK would finally bite the bullet and work in a more joined up fashion too.

The holders of the posts are as follows:

• CIO - Chief Information Officer - Vivek Kundra
  
• CTO - Chief Technology Officer - Aneesh Chopra (Also see Aneesh Chopra named federal CTO)
• CPO - Chief Performance Officer - Jeffrey Zients
  

Related links:

• President Obama Names Vivek Kundra Chief Information Officer
• Federal CIO Vivek Kundra outlines top priorities for first 100 days

Musings on Influence and Project Success

For ages I've personally felt that influencing people was one of my weakest ares in need of development, so I was quite surprised when two senior managers independently commented that from their perspective I succeed in influencing people so disagreed with my own assessment.  Reflecting on this I wonder if perhaps what they are seeing as 'influencing' is really my motivating people to achieve things in the short-term (which admittedly is a rather important trait for a project manager) and not 'influencing' at all.

I recently read an interesting article 'How to 10X Your Influence' by Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, and Andrew Shimberg which was published in the MIT Sloan Management Review.  They are from the same stable of Vital Smarts that produced the excellent 'Crucial Conversations' and 'Crucial Confrontations'.  It outlines the results of some amazing research which identified 6 sources of influence and concluded that if strategies are applied using at least 4 of these sources, we can influence vital behaviours and achieve sustainable change.

That's the key thing for me... sustainable change.  As a project manager I can introduce change, get people's buy-in, implement process and technology changes, and even effect some behaviour change during the lifetime of the project.  What concerns me is that by it's very nature, a project has an end and the project manager moves on to other things.  So - what happens then?  I made it very clear in the presentation I gave when interviewed for my current role that in my view a project manager delivering within time, within scope, within budget, to the required quality does not represent project success because the actual benefits of a project come afterwards.  Project success, to me anyway, is actually determined by the people who are expected to make use of the solution (whether it be a new process or technology or something else).  If those people don't make the changes in behaviour - then the change will be fleeting and all the time and effort spent on the project could be a complete waste of time and energy.  Yes, I know we learn things from the experience successful or otherwise- but in terms of making effective use of scarce resources etc. the argument stands.

This brings me back to the article again.  I really like the model that the authors have produced as it is easy to grasp and very powerful.  I picked up a copy of their book whilst at a masterclass session run by Graham Robb Associates on Wednesday morning (*makes mental note to say more about this in another post*).  Entitled 'Influencer: The Power to Change Anything' and a NY Times Bestseller, it was named as business book of the year 2008 by Soundview.  What's more interesting that the accolades is the stories - take a look at the videos on their website.  I'm looking forward to reading it over the Easter holidays.  If you want to have a peek yourself, the first chapter is available online.


Related posts:

• Crucial conversations - buy it, read it, do it!
• Silence Fails and Crucial Conversations
  

VIDEO: A Guy In a Cube

Ignore the fact that this video is an advert from VItalsmarts for their Crucial Conversations book and training - the truth of the message is delivered in such an amusing and effective way that I thought enough of it to share it with you (I won't say particularly of local government as it is probably equally if not more true of the private sector).

Prince2 : 2009 Release Date

It's official - the new Prince2:2009 material will be available from 16 June 2009.  At least, so says the lead author's blog and an e-mail from TSO which arrived days after the date was leaked elsewhere.  If you want to attend the launch in London you'll need an invite - I suspect that those that have participated in QA are likely to be on the guest list, but who knows.

After my experience with the ITIL v3 books I'm trying to decide whether I should wait a few months for the errata and next reprint before rushing out and getting the first edition or whether my curiosity about the changes will win out.  I suspect the latter...

Adventures on Twitter?

I've been consciously resisting from having anything to do with the Twitter phenomen for a long time now.  However, last week I found that the author of almost every single blog that I read had something to say about twitter.  This, combined with a recent thread on the British Computer Society's Women's Forum tipped me over the edge.  As if to reaffirm that I was right to step off - Michael Deutch of Mindjet went and posted a mindmap on all things Twitter.  I hadn't made it by then that would have pushed me off the cliff certainly!

So - I'm there.  Making a rare tweet in a sea of tweets, hopefully of some interest to someone somewhere - though how that someone somewhere will find it amongst all that spam...  I'll post about which tools I'm using another day - inevitably with yet another website signed up to, there are a plethora of tools to help wade through the sea that I've jumped into.  If you also succumbed, you can follow my adventures on Twitter. Although their less like adventures and more like a few steps outside the front door.

I have to say though - thus far, I'm not convinced and may soon find myself scrambling back up the cliff face!

Prince2 : 2009 Project Refresh

Although I've been following Andy Murray's blog on the Prince 2 Refresh Project, there hasn't really been much meat to it, in terms of understanding what this refresh really means for what we currently know as the Prince 2 project methodology.  According to his presentation (see link below) this was to protect crown copyright - okay... if you say so.  It seems now the time is right to reveal some of the content changes, and on the surface it sounds like a good thing.

In terms of structure there are now 7 Principles, 7 Themes (formerly components), and 7 Processes.

I like that they've gathered the principles that were scattered all over the book and reduced them down to 7 and that we can apply the test, 'Am I doing this? If not it isn't Prince2' to each.  Of the 7 (Business Justification, Roles & Responsibilities, Product Focus, Managed by Stages, Management of Risk, Scaling and Tailoring, and Learning Lessons) I find the latter a little curious.  Andy emphasised the need to learn from prior experience rather than simply identifying new lessons during a project and producing a report at the end.  It's not that I disagree with it - I just find it strange that it is important enough to be considered a 'principle'.

I'm pleased to see that 'Planning' has been removed as a single process and there is recognition that this goes on continuously throughout a project as well as major bouts of it at stage boundaries.  This is being addressed by including it as one of the 7 key themes (Business Case, Organisation, Plans, Risk, Progress, Quality, Issues & Changes) which all need to be continually present and reviewed throughout the project lifecycle.

We also wave goodbye to the 45 sub-processes (how I shall miss thee CS3...) and the 3 techniques (I never understood why these three were selected out of the many needed to run a successful project!).  Instead of sub-processes we will get un-coded activities and recommended actions.  In the case of techniques they rightly say they will refer to other Bodies of Knowledge, after all, why try to be all things to all people when other things exist?

Interestingly the number of management products has been cut from 36 to 25 based on what the authoring team consider to be a 'typical project'.  Andy didn't explain what this was so I am curious to find out.  What he did say was that we can scale up or down according to need.  Certainly when working with DSDM this will be scaling up!

It sounds like it's going in the right direction, it will be interesting to see how the pilots go and if they result in many alterations.  From my point of view I am particularly looking forward to the guidance for those directing a project as this is a real weak area.  All too often I see Project Board members who see their role as putting a name on a document for sign-off rather than having an active role and responsibilities.  Although as a project manager we can offer them guidance on what that should be - to have the fallback of Prince2:2009 Directing a Project guidance would be helpful.

Are you interested in the refresh? What's your take on it?

Source:

• Andy Murray's presentation of the project progress update at the International Congress for Project, Programme and Risk Management.
•  Copy of the slides for the presentation delivered above
• BCS article: Prince 2 exams set to be refreshed Q2: 2009