All Posts in Policies and Procedures

|In: Business Ethics|Last Updated:

Next year, wish everyone you know a Nifty Newton’s Birthday and a Pleasant Perihelion.

Lauren Eve Pomerantz, a regular correspondent, suggested these as tongue-in-cheek alternatives to the usual and strangely controversial choices for well-wishing during the interval between Thanksgiving and early January. Sir Isaac was born 12/25/1642, and “Remember,” she points out, “if it hadn’t been for Newton discovering gravity, we would all have to be tied down to the Earth, like people in olden days.”

The Perihelion — January 3rd, the day the Earth most closely approaches the sun — isn’t as notable an event, but at least it has astronomical significance, in contrast to the New Year, which celebrates the Earth passing an entirely arbitrary point in its orbit.

But I’m sure plenty of Americans would take offense, just as almost a third do when they hear “Happy Holidays” (at least according to Newsweek). Taking offense is a growth industry.

Following this year’s “Holiday Card to the Industry,” which discussed this subject, the floodgates opened. I received even more mail about “Happy Holidays” vs “Merry Christmas” than I did in response to my columns about corporate dress codes and global warming (separate subjects — I haven’t tried to link dress codes and global warming, although it’s tempting).

For the record, most agreed with the column’s position that getting steamed at the phrase “Happy Holidays” doesn’t make much sense, and encouraging Christians to become angry about it is reprehensible. Among the minority who wrote to chastise me, quite a few focused on my having embroiled KJR in political issues (again) and for taking a liberal position in doing so. Both challenges are worth responding to.

So I will.

Second one first: If I’m a liberal for encouraging you to take no offense when someone wishes you well using secular phrasing, that means encouraging people to take offense when offered good wishes is the mark of a loyal conservative. I’m pretty sure, though, that neither political party claims sole ownership of bad manners.

First one second: Whether I extended KJR beyond its scope and my expertise to cover a political issue. It’s a fine opportunity to make an important distinction — between political issues and issues that have become politicized.

Here’s the difference. Imagine Senator Bill Frist made a speech on the Senate floor decrying the trend toward casual garb in the workforce, and that Senator Ted Kennedy responded in favor of neck-tie-less attire. Does anyone think this would immediately make it inappropriate for KJR to take a stance on corporate dress codes, or that being against mandatory neckties would make yours truly a liberal?

The contrast is clear: Were KJR to run a column taking a position on how to deal with the conflict in Iraq, whether the U.S. should defend Taiwan militarily in the event of invasion by mainland China, or whether the United States should reduce the federal deficit through revenue increases along with cost reductions and deficit spending, those would be political columns that exceed its scope and my special competence.

But dress codes, global warming and how to wish friends, co-workers and customers well are not political issues, although two of the three have become politicized. Were I to consider politicized subjects off limits, it would silence this column on subjects that are of great importance to IT executives and managers.

Bad idea. For that matter, some issues that are clearly political matter greatly to an IT audience: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, offshore outsourcing and the “in-shoring” of foreign IT professionals are high-profile examples. They’re in bounds as well.

As it happens, the question of whether to offer a secular or non-secular greeting during the Holiday Season is just one ramification of a serious issue IT leaders deal with every day. Next week’s column will dig into it; here’s a preview to get you thinking:

In many companies and probably most, employees celebrate each others’ birthdays. Probably, as an IT manager, you’ve participated, and wished employees “Happy Birthday,” too.

Now imagine one of your employees is a Jehovah’s Witness, and therefore considers the celebration of birthdays to be sacrilegious since the tradition’s origin traces back to Roman polytheism and the celebration of various gods’ days (or so a Jehovah’s Witness missionary explained to me many years back). How do you handle the situation?

* * *

I’ve been writing this column in its various incarnations once a week for ten years now. When it started, as InfoWorld’s “IS Survival Guide,” I wasn’t sure I could come up with 50 strongly held opinions, let alone the 500 that a decade required. I’d ask you to be more impressed, except that Isaac Asimov published that many books in his lifetime.

Still, ten perihelia have passed since I started these musings, and that’s a milestone of sorts. Welcome to the start of the next ten.

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|In: Leadership|Last Updated:

I’m told Proctor and Gamble does an amazing job of measuring its innovation assets. Its chart of accounts, for example, can track the cost and revenue of every fragrance the company develops. Oddly, though, there’s no equivalent way to track the profitability of flavors.

That’s right, there’s no accounting for tastes.

Speaking of partial solutions, last week’s column advised that alignment of goals is more powerful and reliable than specification of responsibilities. Decades of experience on both sides of delegation affirm the value of this perspective.

But it’s incomplete. Decades of experience also tell me that you can’t manage a project unless everyone on the project team knows what tasks they should be working on each and every week, when each task should finish, and what “finished” means. And that the project manager has to verify, each and every week, that the tasks that should have completed did, in fact, finish. Sounds like specification of responsibilities.

So what’s the deal? Is project management so different from other leadership situations that the same rules don’t apply?

The answer is the difference between leadership and management. In leadership situations, goals are broadly stated and success can come in many forms. They’re organic. Project situations are, in many respects, more similar to processes, where schedules interlock, specifications are the goal, and deliverables have to mesh. They’re mechanistic. And as Admiral Grace Hopper put it, you lead people, but have to manage processes.

If you’re the CEO of a large corporation, you might establish strategic goals for the business such as increasing sales by 10%, achieving a more uniform public perception of the company’s brands, improving margins by 2%, and building the organizational capability to release ten new and successful products to the marketplace every year. The Senior VP of Sales recognizes a personal accountability to: Increase sales by 10%; do so without violating brand image; train the sales force in how to sell new products, and structure commissions so as to avoid cutting into margins.

As CEO you’ve established common goals, and the responsibilities of Sales Management, Supply Chain, Manufacturing and so on in achieving them. If you have to establish week-by-week plans for each area and personally oversee them, you’ve hired the wrong executives. If they can’t work independently when appropriate while working together whenever necessary, you’ve still hired the wrong executives.

Now imagine you’re managing a software integration project. You can’t simply establish four broad project goals, align the project team members to them, and expect anything useful to happen. Each team member depends on the others to deliver work products that fit together according to a precise design, and to deliver them when they’re needed.

This doesn’t invalidate the principle of aligning project team members to goals — it means you have to apply it differently.

If project managers were exempt from the principle of delegating goals and aligning everyone to them, they would define all tasks and the overall schedule themselves — a terrific way to give every project team member a perfect excuse for missing deadlines.

With goals in alignment, the team members responsible for each assignment develop the work plans for their achievement — work breakdown structures and timelines they can commit to. As project manager you assemble them, connect the interdependencies, and fine-tune the schedule with the whole team so everyone agrees the entire project is feasible.

Alignment to a common goal is also a big part of making sure work products fit together instead of simply meeting the letter of the specifications. Since it’s a team, its members compare notes instead of working in vacuums. When managing a project, establishing a common goal and aligning everyone to it is what makes the project team a team instead of a committee.

But even with goals in perfect alignment, project managers have to review everyone’s progress every week. With the best of intentions and the hardest and smartest work, risks do turn into reality, the unexpected turns into the inevitable, and, sadly, some project team members turn out to be unreliable.

That’s a fact, and when facts and great ideas collide, the great ideas don’t stand a chance. The tight coupling of activities within a project means projects have to be managed as well as led.

In a way, that’s too bad. Because while leadership requires more courage than management, management is harder work.

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