Project Management and Human Nature

“You don’t really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around — and why his parents will always wave back.” – journalist William D. Tammeus

As a father, I completely understand this quote and I’ve done this many times. It’s absolutely true. As an author and reader, I’m intrigued by it. And that I heard it on an episode of Criminal Minds this year surprises me. In fact, I posted it to my Facebook account and numerous people commented on it and ‘liked it’, but I bet they would all be surprised it came from that show.

Enough about the quote, let’s talk about human nature. What is human nature? Wikipedia states that ‘human nature’ is the concept that there are a set of characteristics, including ways of thinking, feeling and acting, that all ‘normal’ humans have in common. Ok…hopefully I’m categorized as normal…depends on the day of the week probably. Answers.com defines ‘human nature’ as the sum of all qualities and traits shared by all humans. And the online Merriam-Webster dictionary site defines ‘human nature’ as the nature of humans – especially the fundamental dispositions and traits of humans.

So, back to the topic of project management. How does human nature apply to project management? Here are my thoughts…. I’m thinking it centers around a few concepts or activities such as communication, organization, control, ambition. While we don’t all have those traits, I think most individuals who would be categorized as somewhat normal have something within their being that, under the right circumstances, strives to achieve those traits. Yes, that’s what I’ll cling to. Now let me quickly apply that to project management.

Communication

As humans, we all feel the need to communicate with each other from time to time. It’s my experience that your average project manager is – or should be – on the high end of that need. Communication is key, but it still must be good, timely and effective communication. If you’re on the quiet side, you’re probably in the wrong profession.

Organization

Ok, as for me, I’m not the most organized person at home…just ask my wife. But as a project manager, I’m usually pretty organized. I wake up late at night if I’ve failed to send out an email or feel the need to update my team or the customer on something and I have to get out of bed and do it then or I’ll never get back to sleep. I must have a routine schedule for each of my projects – a regular weekly formal status call with the team and customer, a specific day of the week when the revised project schedule and status report goes out, and a specific day of the week when I have a ‘scheduled’ call with my team – I say scheduled because there’s always a lot of unscheduled communication with them also.

Control

Control kind of goes hand-in-hand with organization. The project manager must remain in control – they must be the person that the organization, the team and the customer sees as always ‘in charge.’ Otherwise, chaos will take over. It takes a certain personality….a certain confidence. If you don’t have it, you’ll likely find out soon enough. At least your team and customer will.

Ambition

Finally, ambition. The project manager must have ambition…ambition to reach the final goal for the project. Ambition to take on more responsibility. Ambition to progress in their field. If you lack that ambition, then you’re less likely to stay on top of processes and the current technology to do your job well. And it will show in your work. Project success is hard enough to achieve given all of the potential obstacles and factors. It’s critical that the PM have the ambition and drive to succeed and lead their team and customer to similar successes.

The Art of Productive Laziness – What is productive laziness?

‘Progress isn’t made by early risers. It’s made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.’ Robert Heinlein (1907 – 1988)

By advocating being a ‘lazy’ project manager I do not intend that we should all do absolutely nothing. I am not saying we should all sit around drinking coffee, reading a good book and engaging in idle gossip whilst watching the project hours go by and the non-delivered project milestones disappear over the horizon. That would obviously be plain stupid and would result in an extremely short career in project management, in fact probably a very short career full stop!

Lazy does not mean Stupid. No I really mean that we should all adopt a more focused approach to project management and to exercise our efforts where it really matters, rather than rushing around like busy, busy bees involving ourselves in unimportant, non-critical activities that others can better address, or indeed that do not need addressing at all in some cases.

Science behind the laziness – being focused

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule) states that for many phenomena 80% of consequences stem from 20% of the causes. The idea has rule-of-thumb application in many places, but it’s also commonly misused, for example, it is a misuse to state that a solution to a problem ‘fits the 80-20 rule’ just because it fits 80% of the cases; it must be implied that this solution requires only 20% of the resources needed to solve all cases.

The principle was in fact suggested by management thinker Joseph M. Juran and it was named after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who observed that 80% of property in Italy was owned by 20% of the Italian population. The assumption is that most of the results in any situation are determined by a small number of causes.

So ‘20% of clients may be responsible for 80% of sales volume’. This can be evaluated and is likely to be roughly right, and can be helpful in future decision making. The Pareto Principle also applies to a variety of more mundane matters: one might guess approximately that we wear our 20% most favoured clothes about 80% of the time, perhaps we spend 80% of the time with 20% of our acquaintances and so on.

The Pareto Principle or 80/20 rule can and should be used by every smart but lazy person in their daily life. The value of the Pareto Principle for a project manager is that it reminds you to focus on the 20 percent that matters.

Woody Allen once said ‘80% of success is showing up’, I’m not so sure about that, I have seen projects where there was a physical project manager around but you would never have believed that looking at the project progress, or lack of progress.

No, better I believe to appreciate that of the things you do during your day, only 20 percent really matter. Those 20 percent produce 80 percent of your results.

So, you should identify and focus on those things during your working day.

Science behind the laziness – being smart

It’s no good just being lazy; you have to be better than lazy, you have to be lazy in a very smart way.

Productive Laziness is not just about being lazy, it requires something more and that is a powerful and magical combination of laziness and intelligence. Smart lazy people have a real edge over others in society and are most suited to leadership roles in organizations.

This theory has existed for many years and applied in a number of interesting ways. One of the most famous of these was in the Prussian Army.

Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke (1800 – 1891) was a German Generalfeldmarschall. The chief of staff of the Prussian Army for thirty years, he is widely regarded as one of the great strategists of the latter half of the 1800s, and the creator of a new, more modern method, of directing armies in the field.

In 1857 Helmuth Moltke was given the position Chief of the Prussian Großer Generalstab (military staff), a position he held for the next 30 years. As soon as he gained the position he went to work making changes to the strategic and tactical methods of the Prussian army; changes in armament and in means of communication; changes in the training of staff officers; and changes to the method for the mobilization of the army. He also instituted a formal study of European politics in connection with the plans for campaigns which might become necessary. In short, he rapidly put into place the features of a modern General Staff.

Moltke had a particular insight to and approach to categorising his officer corps, something which lives on to this day within many armed forces, and something which can apply to all forms of leadership.

If you consider the two ranges of individual characteristics, those that go from diligent through to lazy, and those that go from non-smart through to smart (yes I am being politically correct here) then you end up with the four character types.

General von Moltke divided his officer corps into these four distinct types, depending on their mental and physical characteristics. He ended up with (and he never had to be politically correct being born in the 19^th century and being chief of the Prussian army) type A: mentally dull and physically lazy, type B: mentally bright and physically energetic, type C: mentally dull and physically energetic, and type D: mentally bright and physically lazy.

Type ‘A’ officers, who were mentally dull and physically lazy, were given simple, repetitive, and unchallenging tasks to perform. They had reached their career peak in the army. That said, if you left them alone then they might just come up with a good idea one day, if not then they won’t cause you any problems either.

Type ‘B’ officers who were mentally bright and physically energetic were considered to be obsessed with micromanagement and would, as a result, be poor leaders. Promotion was possible over a period of time but not to the status of commanding officer of the German General Staff. These officers were best at making sure orders were carried out and thoughtfully addressing all the detail.

Type ‘C’ officers who were mentally dull but physically energetic were considered to be somewhat dangerous. To Moltke, they were officers who would require constant supervision, which was an unacceptable overhead and distraction, and because they would potentially create problems faster than could be managed, these officers were considered too much trouble and were dismissed. No career there then!

Which brings us to type ‘D’ officers; these were the mentally bright and yet physically lazy officers who Moltke felt could and should take the highest levels of command. This type of officer was both smart enough to see what needed to be done but was also motivated by inherent laziness to find the easiest, simplest way to achieve what was required. Put in a more positive way they would know how to be successful through the most efficient deployment of effort.

So, smart lazy people have a real edge over others and are most suited to leadership roles in organizations. The Lazy Project Manager is all about applying these principles in the delivery and management of projects. It is assumed that you are not stupid so you are already on the right-hand side of the diagram, what you now need to do is hone your lazy skills in order to rise to the top right hand side of the diagram. Do this and not only will your projects be more successful, you will also be seen as successful and a safe pair of hands for future leadership roles.

‘Whenever there is a hard job to be done I assign it to a lazy man; he is sure to find an easy way of doing it.’ – Walter Chrysler