Beyond WIIFM

Jim Batterson

Chinese culture, especially under Mao, placed strong emphasis on a value celebrating those people who acted selflessly, heroically sacrificing themselves for the common good. The posters, movies, songs and stories from this era are international cult collector's items and have a "camp" appeal outside of China. Many are laughable in the extreme examples they portray.

Within China selflessness is still emphasized in the schools, but within adult society there is a growing class of (relatively) very rich people who have corruptly leveraged their position within the party to their own benefit. These people are hated, envied and admired, as you might expect.

A more deeply embedded characteristic of Chinese culture is the concept of Guanxi. Guanxi is like an informal accounting system of favors done for people. In 1994-1995, Xucheng lived at my house, all meals, soap, toothpaste, toilet paper, everything, for absolutely free while he was an exchange teacher at a local elementary school for the school year. (He was the tenth Chinese man who lived with us.) When I visited his school (he is headmaster) I taught for free, and the mere presence of a foreign teacher enhanced his prestige within the community.

But Xucheng is also the kind of fellow who is constantly doing favors for other people and is able to call upon them when he needs a favor. When we needed transportation and the school car was not available, he made a phone call and presto; we rode around all day in a police car! When I needed a doctor in Lipu, one showed up at my room, no charge. But most impressive of all, when I was 500 miles away in the city of Kunming and sick as a dog, within an hour after Xucheng found out about it an English-speaking doctor showed up at my hotel room with the medicine I needed. Believe me, if you were sick in a hotel in Saint Louis, I could not arrange that for you in a month of Sundays.

There was a discussion on Jerry Weinberg's SHAPE Forum recently about how to say no when people ask you for favors — asking you to do work for them for free. I think we could learn something from the Chinese about how to say yes. I believe in Karma.

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Don't Rebuild the Chrysler Building

When we undertake change, we're usually surprised at the effort and cost required. Much of this effort and cost is necessary because of the nature of the processes we're changing. What can we do differently to make change easier in the future?

Change How You Change

In the past two years, your life has probably changed. Do you commute over the same route you did two years ago? Same transportation? Same job? Same company? Same industry? Change is all around, and you're probably pretty skilled at it. You can become even more skilled if you change how you change.

Plenty of Blame to Go Around

You may have heard the phrase "plenty of blame to go around," or maybe you've even used it yourself. Although it sometimes does bring an end to immediate finger pointing, it also validates blame as a general approach. Here's how to end the blaming by looking ahead.

Outsourcing Each Other's Kids

Outsourcing is now so widespread that it has achieved status as a full-fledged management fad. But many outsourcing decisions lack the justification that a full financial model provides. Here are some of the factors that such a model should include.

The Ties that Bind

Changing anything in an organization reveals how it's connected to its people, to its processes, to its facilities, and to the overall context. Usually, these connections reach out much further into the organization than we imagine.

See also Organizational Change and Effective Communication at Work for more related articles.

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Organizational Politics for People Who Hate Politics

Have you ever felt powerless to implement an important new idea? Have you ever been "blind-sided" at a meeting? Have you ever lost two good employees because you could find no way to keep them from attacking each other? These are some of the issues of organizational politics. Many of us have become enmeshed in them from time to time, but we've also known some people who seem to be able to engage and prosper. How is that done? We'll inventory the challenges of organizational politics, and provide tools for anticipating and addressing them. The focus of this program is practical — attendees learn concrete techniques for dealing with the problems that arise in workplace politics, while keeping their integrity intact. Read more about this program. Here are some upcoming dates for this program:

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  your calendarWherever you are: it's a teleseminar: October 22, Teleseminar, Computer Aid, Inc. (CAI). Register now.
   
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  your calendarBoston, Massachusetts: October 30, Class, Software Development Best Practices Conference. Register now.
   
• Albany, New York: January 21, 2009, Dinner Meeting, Upstate New York Chapter of the Project Management Institute. Register now.
   

Planning Your Agile Initiative

Adopting agile approaches to software development carries risk. If you've discovered some of the problems for yourself, or if you've heard horror stories from others, you know some of the risks. This session explores the nature of the risks of agile adoption. We'll explore the top three risk factors that tangle agile initiatives, and examine relevant mitigation strategies. Most organizations err by starting with training. A more constructive approach with faster return on investment is organic agile capability development. We'll discuss how you can grow organizational agile capability organically by balancing training, coaching and restructuring. Faulty or misleading agile capability indicators are a second pitfall. Although there is no standard measure of agility yet, we'll show you how to focus on what matters to your business to achieve the full promise of agile methods. Finally, we'll explore the importance of measurement methodology and how you set up expectations around budget and schedule targets. By looking at what has gone wrong in agile adoption initiatives, we'll help you prevent the foreseeable problems, and mitigate the risks of the unforeseeable ones. With Nancy Van Schooenderwoert. Here's an upcoming date for this program:

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  your calendarBoston, Massachusetts: October 29, Class, Software Development Best Practices Conference. Register now.
   

Human-Centered Risk Management

Most of us can assess technological risks, but risks related to human behavior tend to resist our best efforts. This session provides a framework for evaluating risks related to the behavior of individuals, teams, organizations and people generally. Human-centered risk differs from technological or market risk, because objective evaluation requires acknowledging personal and organizational limitations and failures. Since some of those limitations and failures might apply to the people assessing the risks, or to their superiors, there's a tendency to deny them or to explain them away. Our approach examines capability, organization, context, risk mitigation, and workplace politics. It has tools for guiding the assessment and management of human-centered risk, and we show how to extend these tools to suit your situation. You'll learn how to identify sources of risk in human behavior; recognize systemic and individual barriers to acknowledging risk; assess the effects of organizational turbulence; determine the risk associated with inappropriate internal risk transfer; estimate the effects of team dysfunction, toxic conflict and turnover; and measure the impact of workplace politics. Read more about this program. Here's an upcoming date for this program:

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  your calendarBoston, Massachusetts: October 29, Class, Software Development Best Practices Conference. Register now.
   

Managing Virtual Teams for Real Results

Managing global or dispersed teams is challenging — miscommunications, misunderstandings, and interpersonal conflict all thrive in the typical environment of the distributed team. And they're even more common in global teams, because of time-zone offsets and language and cultural differences. We'll inventory the challenges distributed and global teams face, and provide tools for anticipating and addressing them. The focus of this program is practical — attendees will learn concrete techniques for preventing and dealing with the problems that accompany global and distributed teams. Read more about this program. Here's an upcoming date for this program:

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  your calendarWherever you are: it's a teleseminar: November 6, Teleseminar, Computer Aid, Inc. (CAI). Register now.
   

Decision Making for Project Managers

What do you do when your team can't make critical decisions? Or worse, when they make a decision, what do you do when they open it up again next week? Making good decisions and facilitating group decisions are both critical skills for project managers. In this revealing and interactive program, I demonstrate a model of decision-making that captures the internal conflicts we all feel when we make difficult decisions. With a better understanding of how we resolve conflicting priorities, we not only become more skilled at making decisions, but we learn how to make decisions that "stick." Read more about this program. Here's an upcoming date for this program:

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  your calendarPortland, Maine: November 13, Monthly Meeting, Maine Chapter of the Project Management Institute. Register now.
   

The Politics of Meetings for People Who Hate Politics

There's a lot more to running an effective meeting than having the right room, the right equipment, and the right people. With meetings, the whole really is more than the sum of its parts. How the parts interact with each other and with external elements is as important as the parts themselves. And those interactions are the essence of politics for meetings. This program explores techniques for leading meetings that are based on understanding political interactions, and using that knowledge effectively to meet organizational goals. Read more about this program. Here's an upcoming date for this program:

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  your calendarBedford, Massachusetts: January 20, 2009, Monthly Meeting, Boston SPIN.
   

Person-to-Person Communication for Project Managers

When we talk, listen, send or read emails, read or write memos, or when we leave or listen to voice mail messages, we're communicating person-to-person. And whenever we communicate person-to-person, we risk being misunderstood, offending others, feeling hurt, and being confused. There are so many ways for things to go wrong that we could never learn how to fix all the problems. A more effective approach avoids problems altogether, or at least minimizes their occurrence. In this very interactive program you'll learn a model of inter-personal communications that can help you stay out of the ditch. In those moments of intense involvement, when we're most likely to slip, you'll have a new tool to use to keep things constructive. Read more about this program. Here are some upcoming dates for this program:

• Richmond, Virginia (West End): February 18, 2009, Monthly Meeting, Central Virginia Chapter of The Project Management Institute. Register now.
   
• Richmond, Virginia (South Side): February 19, 2009, Monthly Meeting, Central Virginia Chapter of The Project Management Institute. Register now.