Dobson’s Laws of Project Management and Other Things (Part 5)

I’ve been writing and publishing daily management tweets since August 2009. In March 2010, I published a collection of the ones I’d written to that date. Here is the third of three more installments, covering Dobson’s Laws from the beginning of April 2010 through the end of December 2010. Copyright © 2012 by Michael Dobson under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license. 

• 
If you don’t know where you’re going, it’s hard to figure out how to get there — or know when you have.


• 
Literal truth can mislead. If you want people to drive 55, you need to put 45 (or better yet, 40) on the speed limit sign.

• 
Whether you have the right answer usually depends on whether you asked the right question—which may be the greater challenge.


• 
Moderation in all things. You need to leverage your assets without letting them turn you into a full-blown ass.


• 
People assume stakeholders are positive. Not true. Stakeholders can be positive, negative, or tangential to your objective.

1. Positive stakeholders win when you win. Because their interests are aligned, they have an incentive to help you. 
2. Negative stakeholders may oppose your project because they dislike the outcome or because they suffer from the process.
3. Tangential stakeholders have a secondary interest in your project. Which way they go often depends on you.

• People tend to have the morality and ethics they perceive they can afford.


• There are universal professions. No matter what else you do, you are a salesperson, a negotiator, and a firefighter.


• 
In an imperfect world, it is useful to remember that better, even if insufficient, is still better.


• 
There are real problems and real obstacles between ourselves and our goals. There are also fake ones, but they can be quite convincing.


• Always look for the thinking behind a proposed project. Sometimes you will discover that there has not been any.


• 
There are many reasons for hidden agendas. A common one is lack of communication.


• 
To discover hidden agendas, look for personal benefits that accrue to individuals. They may differ from the official goals.


• 
A deadline can be real but still unknown, as long as there are consequences for failing to meet it.
 

• Your official project sponsor is not necessarily the real one: the real one is the most powerful person who wants you to succeed.


• 
No matter how important your current project, tomorrow is another day. Avoid spending relationship capital you may need in the future.


• 
Even win/win negotiation can involve hardball. Decisions and choices have consequences, and conflict cannot always be avoided.

• 
No project plan ever survives first contact with reality. Yours will not be an exception.


• 
The project manager who plans has power. The one who does not is at the mercy of events.


• At the beginning of the project, the big picture is known and the details are often sketchy. Unfortunately, the details *are* the project.


• 
Requirements management is the central tool for planning quality into the project.


• 
Even if they fail to share the goal with you, they can still hold you accountable for failing to meet it.

• Three ways to compress a schedule: (1) Add resources to tasks, (2) Change scope, (3) Change dependencies from sequential to parallel.


• 
A risk is not a problem. Problem is present tense; risk future. Every risk will eventually either turn into a problem or fail to occur.

• 
When risks are managed, there is still normally a level of residual risk left in the background. They are either minor or too expensive.


• 
For all the emphasis on cost, it is actually unusual for the cost constraint to be the driver of the project.


• 
Cost estimating is figuring out how much the project will cost. Cost budgeting is figuring out how to do it with what they give you.


• 
Project managers have far more responsibility than they have power. This is also true for managers in general.


• 
Operational quality is not necessarily part of the performance criteria, but can also include elements of the time and cost constraints.


• Often, the best way to get what you want is to figure out how to give the other person what he or she wants.


• 
Some people are never late, over budget, or under spec — because they rebaseline the project in real time.


• You’re not too old as long as your age is a lower number than your IQ.


• No matter what the time horizon of your project, the time horizon of management is longer.


• 
Problems that aren’t solvable may still be manageable.


• 
Pay for work is always smaller than pay for knowledge or skill. Still higher pay comes from taking risks.


• When I first became a supervisor, I was so naive I actually thought that meant people would do what I told them to.

• Your staff has power, too. If they want to ruin your career and get rid of you, they always have the power to do so.


• 
Supervisors and managers don’t work...at least not in the same sense as workers. They get jobs done through the agency of other people.


• 
Sometimes the best communications strategy is to say absolutely nothing.


• The medium is part of the message. After 6,000 years, some messages still work best when chiseled into rock.


• 
A leader changes focus: from ideas to people, from self to others, from short to long term, and from simple to complicated.


• 
If you give a performance appraisal and the person is surprised, you clearly did a rotten job of giving feedback all year long.


• 
In the real world, credentials often trump actual ability. Fortunately, there are usually all kinds of ways to manufacture good credentials.

Dobson’s Laws of Project Management and Other Things (Part 4)

http://xkcd.com/951/

I’ve been writing and publishing daily management tweets since August 2009. In March 2010, I published a collection of the ones I’d written to that date. Here is the second of three more installments, covering Dobson’s Laws from the beginning of April 2010 through the end of December 2010. Copyright © 2012 by Michael Dobson under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license. 

• 
No matter how vital your mission, you’re never the only game in town. What else is competing for your resources?

• 
The problem isn’t following the crowd; the crowd is often right. The problem is following the crowd *mindlessly*.


• Don’t underestimate the value of accidents. Accidents gave us penicillin, vulcanized rubber, and PostIt® notes.


• 
One of the top mental illnesses is OPD: Obnoxious Personality Disorder. Have you checked yourself for warning signs lately?

• 
Looking for evidence you’re wrong is harder than looking for evidence you’re right, but potentially much more valuable.


• Constraints can be tight or loose, flexible or inflexible. Here are 3 things to do with restrictive constraints: 

1. Negotiate. Is there more money, more time, or flexibility in the deliverables?
 
2. Analyze assumptions. Does the Miami customer really need the item to work in -30° weather?
 
3. Be creative. Is there an alternate way to get the job done?

• There’s always a question that if asked early enough will reveal what’s about to happen. Maybe you can figure out how to ask it next time.

• If you don't know where you’re going, hard work won’t get you there.


• 
Life is like baseball. If you’re batting 1.000, you’re not playing in the major leagues.


• 
If you need to take big risks in order to achieve your objective, it’s a good idea to minimize the cost and consequence of failure.


• 
People always tell the truth...especially when they lie. We choose our lies, so they speak volumes about us — if you know how to listen.


• 
If people are involved, the shortest distance between two points is *never* a straight line.

• The physics of organizations — Friction. When moving parts interface, friction reduces efficiency and creates waste heat. Lubrication is necessary.


• 
The physics of organizations — Entropy. All systems are entropic; they move from order toward chaos unless outside energy is applied.


• The physics of organizations — Inertia: People at rest tend to stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside force. Once they move, they keep moving, at least until friction and entropy grind them down.

• 
Annoyance is another mother of invention.


• 
Unpleasant processes can bring desirable results...but wouldn’t it be great if being fit and slim didn’t require diet or exercise?


• 
Unless you have an education or do the research, you do not have an educated opinion on the subject.


• 
Research suggests that stupid people think they are smarter than they are, and smart people think they are less smart. How smart did you say you were again?

• Those who can, do. Those who cannot make better teachers, because they understand why you are having trouble.


• One dimension of creativity is the willingness to bellyflop in public and then do it over again.


• 
Forgiving your enemies is one of the most selfishly valuable things you can do. Let go of the negative emotion...but remember their names.


• 
Pessimists see the world more clearly, but optimists tend to live longer and make more money.


• 
The average IQ is 100. Two-thirds of the population have IQs between 80 and 120. Be patient, be generous, and be unsurprised. 


• 
We associate age with wisdom, but age only provides experience. Wisdom is optional.


• 
Dare to be stupid. Smart people know better than to color outside the lines.

• It is better to give than to receive, but receiving is pretty cool, too.


• 
The majority of people try to be decent and honest within the limits of their ability and understanding. Be generous as well as prudent.


• 
Generosity pays. The more you give, the more you get, in surprising and varied ways.


• 
Four dimensions of a risk: 

1. Goodness - People equate risk with threat, but events can be beneficial or harmful. Sometimes you can choose.
  
2. Impact - What it means to *you.* The net impact of a risk (good or bad) often depends on how you play it.
3. Probability - When impact is variable, there is usually a lesser chance of a greater impact.
 
4. Time - What we knew yesterday is different from what we will know tomorrow. Risks and choices are not static.

• Risk taker? Risk avoider? A false distinction. We all embrace risk in some areas of our lives and eschew it in others.


• Stakeholders often create project risk for you by the act of offloading their own risk.


• 
The end of the technical work is not the end of the project. Turnover and closeout are often fraught with risk; plan for them.


• 
Three pillars of civilization: economic development, universal education, and a commitment to treat people better than they deserve.


• 
Zero-sum games only rearrange things: the same number of poker chips leave the table, only in different pockets. Winners require losers.
 
Non-zero-sum games can create or destroy value. If I want your stuff more than I want my money, and you feel the opposite, we both win.
 Common sense makes people think most games are zero-sum. The opposite is almost always true — there *is* such a thing as a free lunch. The zero-sum mindset is a trap. Assume opportunity...and then look for it.


• What is half of thirteen? Six and a half is one right answer, but so is *thir.* Many questions have more than one right answer.


• 
Picasso was once asked what it felt like to be a great artist. He drew a sketch on a $1 bill. “Now it is $1000,”he said.


• “Picasso, draw things as they really look, like this photo of my wife!” said the drunk. Picasso said, “Your wife? She seems rather small. And flat.”

• *Can* does not imply *should.* But it definitely implies *will.*

• It is highly improbable that nothing highly improbable will happen.

• 
Your mind is designed to cope with life in the Stone Age. This means your first reaction is often the opposite of what it needs to be. 


• 
For every problem, there is a simple, clear, and straightforward answer. It is almost certainly wrong.

• You don’t know how good you’ve got it until you can’t get at it.


• To paraphrase Holmes, when all better options have been foreclosed, whatever remains, no matter how rotten, is your solution set.


Dobson’s Laws of Project Management and Other Things (Part 3)

I’ve been writing and publishing daily management tweets since August 2009. In March 2010, I published a collection of the ones I’d written to that date. Here is the first of three more installments, covering Dobson’s Laws from the beginning of April 2010 through the end of December 2010. Copyright © 2012 by Michael Dobson under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license. 

• Two metrics for ethical decisions: Will anyone suffer a negative outcome? Would you like it if other people did the same thing?

• Work is like an iceberg. 90% of it is below the surface and not readily apparent to bosses or customers.

• If you don’t change your mind from time to time, you’re probably not thinking.


• 
If your project has enemies, your underperformance in any area is their target of opportunity. Be prepared to counter-spin the story.


• 
For Earth Day, take a green approach to dead projects. Recycle processes, lessons learned, resources, and incidental byproducts.


• 
The amount of emphasis placed on a performance element doesn’t necessarily correlate with its actual importance.


• 
Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can put off until the day after tomorrow. By then, it may be overtaken by events.


• 
Identify bad projects early. You may not always be able to dodge them, but if you’re in charge of a sinking ship, you need to know when to bail.

• You’re not there to do what the customer says, but what the customer wants. 


• 
Failure at a project or phase level doesn’t necessarily mean failure of the overall objective — or vice versa.

• 
If there’s more than one reason why a project should be done, some stakeholder wants it done for *that* reason and no other.

• 
No one in the world needs a power drill. What people *need* are holes. Don’t confuse means with ends.

• In a finite environment, someone else can always make use of your resources. Don’t think this hasn’t occurred to them already.

• There’s always some picture in the mind of the boss or customer. Whether it’s right or wrong, you still have to manage it.


• A constraint is only a constraint if it blocks a route to your objective.


• 
A deadline is the latest you can get it done, the budget is the most you can spend, and the scope is the least you can do.


• 
People and politics are responsible for most project risk. Project risk plans, in contrast, focus primarily on technical risks.


• The difference between what you can do without extraordinary effort and what’s desired is the measure of project difficulty.


• 
If you can’t figure out how you *can* solve the problem, try asking why you *can’t* solve it. Sometimes that yields new insights.


• 
Change creates loss. It makes things worse in the short term. Payoffs aren’t ever guaranteed. Don’t trivialize change resistance.


• 
Finishing the work isn’t the same thing as finishing the project. But most project plans ignore the closeout stage altogether.


• 
How are you going to transition the project to its next stage? If you don’t have a plan, the project sticks to you like flypaper.

• 
Sometimes a project really needs to die, and the project manager has to reenact the final scene from Ol’ Yeller.


• 
The best way for you to kill a project is to help the key stakeholders and decision-makers reach the conclusion on their own.

• 
Operationally, a project is impossible if you can’t do what you need to do in the available time or with available resources.


• 
If your assumptions turn out to be even slightly different than you expect, what would be the net effect, both good and bad?


• 
One trick of structured creativity is learning to look first in the places most likely to contain useful insights and opportunities.


• 
When you know why the customer objects, you learn what’s important, and often learn what you can do to overcome the objections.


Potentially Impossible (Managing Impossible Projects, Part 2)

The following series is adapted from a keynote I delivered at the Washington, DC, chapter of the Project Management Institute back in August. Parts also come from my book Creative Project Management (with Ted Leemann), published by McGraw-Hill. 


The Most Dangerous Word

At the outset of the project, you may not always know whether the project is possible or not. That’s why the process of managing an impossible — or potentially impossible — project begins at the outset, during the very first stages of project initiation.

Here’s one of Dobson’s Laws of Project Management: The most dangerous word in project management is a premature “yes.”

Premature certainty, whether it’s positive or negative, can backfire. Saying “yes” before you really know what you’ve said “yes” to can result in a world of trouble.

You can also get in a world of trouble by being too quick to say “no.” Even if your experience and wisdom tell you the project’s impossible on the face of it, saying so too quickly will produce a negative reaction. And, frankly, sometimes “no” is just not going to be an acceptable answer.

When you say, “Sorry, that’s impossible,” they think, “You didn’t even try!”

Failure, Alas, Is an Option 


Let’s set the Way-Bac machine for April 14, 1970, just about 56 hours into the flight of Apollo 13. With the spacecraft about 200,000 miles away from Earth, Mission Control asked the crew to turn on the hydrogen and oxygen tank stirring fans. About 93 seconds later there was a loud “bang.” Oxygen tank #2 had exploded.


If American Movie Classics ever ran a series of “Great Project Management Movies,” surely Ron Howard’s Apollo 13 would be a natural candidate. Faced with a potentially disastrous accident, project teams overcome one potentially fatal barrier after another to bring the crew safely back to earth, guided by mission director Gene Kranz’s mantra, “Failure is not an option.”

But of course failure is an option, and in the case of the Apollo 13 mission, the odds were heavily stacked against a happy outcome— and everybody (including Gene Kranz) had to be well aware of that fact. Within the overall project “get the astronauts home safely,” there were numerous subprojects, including:

• Develop a power-up sequence that draws fewer than 20 amps
• Calculate a burn rate to get the reentry angle within tolerance using the sight of the Earth in the capsule window as the sole reference point
• Design a way to fit the square command module carbon dioxide scrubber filter into the round Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) filter socket.

That last subproject was vital, because the LEM’s carbon dioxide scrubbers were designed to take care of he needs of two people for a day and a half, not three people for three days. And nobody ever imagined that the command module scrubbers would need to be used in the LEM, so they weren’t designed to be compatible. They’re square, and the necessary holes are round. Meanwhile, the carbon dioxide levels are already past 8, and at 15 things become dangerous, and eventually deadly. As the engineers gather in a conference room, boxes of miscellaneous junk — basically everything that’s loose on board the spacecraft — are being dumped on tables.

Managing a Crisis Project

Let’s look at the project management problem.

It’s easy to build a carbon dioxide filter on Earth; there’s a standard specification, a deadline measured in weeks, if not months, and all the resources you need are easy to acquire. In a crisis situation, such as existed aboard Apollo 13, the project looks a little different.

At the beginning of the project, the engineers involved could not know whether the project would turn out to be ultimately impossible. Impossibility could exist in any of the three fundamental constraints.

• Does the time available to accomplish the project equal or exceed the time necessary? 

In developing a replacement for the Apollo 13 mission’s overloaded carbon dioxide filter, engineers were constrained by the amount of time until the astronauts became too impaired to build what they designed. If the deadline turns out to be too short, then the project is impossible.

• Are the resources needed to accomplish the project less than or equal to the resources available? 

The project was constrained by what was actually available on the spacecraft. If their resources are short by even one critical component, no matter how small — a 20¢ screw — the project is impossible.

• Are the performance criteria achievable within the outer boundaries of the other constraints? 

If the improvised filter can’t be made to work long enough for the astronauts to reach Earth orbit when they can return to the command module, then the project is impossible.

As we all know, the Apollo 13 engineers did come up with a workable solution, but that was hardly guaranteed. Had the constraints been slightly different — less time, fewer resources, more challenging performance standards — the outcome would likely have been failure.

But that doesn't mean you shouldn't try.


Next Week: The CHAOS Report!

Dobson's Laws (Part 2)

Herewith another collection of my daily SideWise Insights. Enjoy — and be sure to drop them into casual conversation.

Leadership and Motivation

Leadership skills are not fungible. Eisenhower was a great leader; Patton was a great leader; neither could have done the other's job.

While it's useful to tame what can be tamed, most of the management world lives where the wild things are.

The Old Yeller Rule: you have to know when and how to shoot your own dog. Sometimes it's even an act of mercy.

Realism isn't cynicism. A cynic is disappointed that things are what they are. Realists accept the facts and go from there.

It's not enough to learn the lessons an event teaches; you have to *not* learn the lessons it *doesn't* teach.

If someone spends more time and energy scheming to get out of work than it would take to do it, is that person unmotivated?

In the same way expenses rise faster than income, so does responsibility rise faster than authority.

Competition imposes constraints that aren't under your control. This suggests that a portion of your resources be devoted to intelligence.

You have to pay people to get them to work: you personally, not the organization. Respect, gratitude, and support make great paychecks.

"Lessons learned" aren't pleasant, but they're essential for growth. Make watching the game film as pleasant as possible.

There are two very different reasons to delegate: (a) to get stuff off your desk and (b) to train other people. Do some of each every week.

Another proud graduate of the Blanche Dubois School of Leadership: "We rely on the kindness of strangers!"

The job of leaders is making bad decisions, not good ones. When all options are rotten, the decision goes up the ladder.

When I first became a supervisor, I was so naive I actually believed my title meant people would do what I said.

Work is infinite. Resources are finite. Many management problems derive from this essential truth.

Operational definition of quality: It ain't dog food if the dog don't eat it. If no customer or boss wants it, why is it a requirement?

Power and Politics

Your role power is delegated by other people, but your respect power is something you own personally.

Here's a simple test to see if you have office politics in your organization: Do a headcount. If the result is 3 or higher, the answer is yes.

Power is energy that overcomes resistance to achieve work. The corollary of no power = no work.

The power to say "no" is held at lower organizational levels than the power to say "yes." Don't ask someone whose only answer is negative.

If there are multiple stakeholders, the 500 lb. gorilla wins. If there's more than one 500 lb. gorilla, conflict is inevitable.

Your negotiation power is greatest right before you say "yes." As soon as you've said it, your power plummets.

Pick your fights carefully. Some are necessary, some even desirable, but others should be avoided at all costs.

If you tell people they can have what they want, you're a genius. Tell them "no," you're a moron. Spin your "no" so it sounds like "yes."

If the wasps are already swarming, maybe you shouldn't be riling them up even more.

Military retreats don't garner kudos, but managing one takes a lot of planning. If you expect cutbacks, don't wait for the announcement.

Power follows failure like white corpuscles follow disease. Look for the last major failure to find out which department is most powerful.

Keep your friends close, and your customers closer. You need to manage them.

Project Management and Risk Management

Organizational movement up and down the stovepipe is easier; unfortunately, project managers usually need to work sideways.

A project begins life as a gap between where you are and where you want to be. If the project doesn't close the gap, it's a failure.

There are three main project gaps: the official gap, the underlying gap, and one or more hidden agendas. You need to know them all.

All wars are projects, though not all projects are wars. Borrow the best military thinking, but don't confuse problems with actual enemies.

It's not just one damn thing after another, it's usually the same damn thing over and over again. Attack repetitive crises at the roots.

In spite of a quarter-century of project management professionalism, studies show nearly 70% of all projects fail...and the trend is getting worse.

It's well known project management needs to be scaled, but it also needs to be stretched.

Two reasons projects fail: stuff nobody expected and didn't prepare for, and stuff everybody expected...and didn't prepare for.

Success at the project level doesn't mean success at the program level. "The operation was a success, but the patient died."

It's often an advantage to organize your project in stages. Actual results build enthusiasm and commitment.

Identify bad projects early by looking at stakeholder interests and conflicts. Are you being set up as the scapegoat for inevitable failure?

What makes a project challenging? Complexity, constraints, and (un)certainty. Of them, uncertainty is the toughest to manage.

Megaprojects inevitably have megaproblems. Take scale and complexity into account before judging disaster too harshly.

Some objectives are easier to achieve then others, even if they aren't central. It's often smart to pick low-hanging fruit.

Hidden or unstated objectives may be politically sensitive, and can't be spoken out loud without creating problems.

Some key goals are assumed, not stated, but that doesn't mean you're off the hook. Listen carefully to what people don't say.

"Nothing's impossible" implies unlimited resources and time and really flexible performance goals. None of these apply to project managers.

Earning a PMP only means you know the basics. No one ever finishes learning to be a good project manager.

A risk evaluation prices a risk, but price alone doesn't always tell you whether the risk is worth running.

There is no reliable correlation between short-term and long-term outcomes. Bad early can be great later, and vice versa.

If you do something stupid and get lucky, it doesn't validate the quality of your original decision.

Don't drive carpet tacks with a sledgehammer. Most formal systems are way too robust for most normal projects.

The most overlooked question is "Why?" If you don't know, even if you're on time, on budget, and to spec, you haven't done the job.

All wars are projects, but not all projects are wars. Wars have conscious opponents. Don't confuse ordinary risk with actual malice.

You are never the only game in town. What other projects are going on? How's the overall organization's health? Adjust accordingly.

The project isn't necessarily what they tell you it is. It isn't necessarily even what they think it is. Your job is to figure out what it really is.

Projects live in a finite universe, bounded by the triple constraints of time, cost, and performance.

The triple constraints of time, cost, and performance are never equally constraining. What drives your project? What is most flexible?

On any project, make sure you know where "good enough" is. Even Tiger Woods needs to know what par is.

Why People Don’t Do What You Want

Performance problem come in three varieties: "don't know," "can't do," or "won't do." Each has a different solution.

"Don't know" problems are communications failures. Don't expect your team to perform the Vulcan mind meld.

"Can't do" problems may require training, tools, someone else, or you may have to change what you're asking.

"Won't do" problems are about motivation. Everyone's motivated. Some work harder to get out of work than it would take to do it.

There are three reasons for a “Won’t Do”:

If performance is punished (reward for a bad project is an even worse one), expect motivation to drop quickly.

If failure is rewarded (screw up a job, get an easier one), expect failure.

If performance doesn't seem to matter, people put it on the bottom of the "to do" list, as they should.

Whenever someone isn't doing what you want, remember there are only these three reasons: don't know, can't do, and won't do.

Copyright © 2010 Michael Dobson, and made freely available under the Creative Commons attribution license.

Dobson's Laws (Part 1)

I've been practicing my skills as an aphorist through daily tweets since last August, and I'm grateful for the many insightful responses I've received here, on Twitter, and on Facebook. Herewith a collection of the first 123 of Dobson's Laws, presented in two parts.

Dobson's Laws are copyright © 2010 by Michael Dobson under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license.

Career Management and Personal Growth

Your strength in one situation can be a weakness elsewhere. You must know when you're operating out of your vulnerabilities and biases.

Never say it can't be done in a first meeting, no matter how sure you are. People tend to think you aren't even trying.

Sweat key small stuff. There's often something that makes the customer disproportionately happy, and you can always use more good will.

There is no situation so bad that you cannot make it worse.

Your attitude changes the world around you. If you look at the world through rose-colored glasses, it's amazing how often you get roses.

Research shows pessimists see the world more clearly than optimists, but optimists make more money and live longer. Take your pick.

Things are what they are, but that doesn't make you helpless. The world is filled with both opportunity and danger.

Failure can sometimes be turned into success. If Pisa's tower didn't lean, no one would visit it.

Fight the temptation to take on interesting projects that exceed your performance bandwidth.

If you age your work properly, lots of it will turn out to be unnecessary or irrelevant. This is the great secret of time management.

Most of us are not-so-good Samaritans. But being a good neighbor is in your best interest, too. Someday you might be the one in the ditch.

How often do you describe your workplace as a war zone? Taking flak, being shot down, or out for blood...pay attention to violent metaphors.

Faking can be dishonest, but it can also be a form of practice. I've faked liking people so long that now I actually do.

We correlate age with wisdom, but that's wrong. Age provides experience; wisdom is learning from it.

Communications, Cognitive Bias, Perception, Influence

Realism isn't cynicism. A cynic is disappointed that things are what they are. Realists accept the facts and go from there.

When people rate their own decisions as "95% certain," research shows they're wrong approximately 40% of the time.

You have three kinds of blind spots: ones you don't know you have, ones you embrace or accept, and ones you try to overcome.

The fundamental flaw of almost all management thinking is the assumption that we are all rational.

You want someone to know something, to do something, or to feel something - there are no other reasons to communicate.

In English, gratitude and ingratitude are opposites, but flammable and inflammable are synonyms. Language is a leading cause of fires.

When there aren't standards for empirical proof, our common ground turns into scorched earth.

Telling people it's going to be OK often influences the likelihood it will be. That's not lying; it's premature truth-telling.

The customer is always right only at the end of the project, when they decide if they're happy and want to pay you.

Say back to them what they said to you before arguing. Until they hear their words in your mouth, they don't believe you listened.

A customer only needs two qualifications: a need, and the wherewithal to pay for it. You have to figure out the rest and then supply it.

Every communications medium has some special virtue nothing else can replace. After 6,000 years, we still chisel some messages into stone.

In the South, an honest politician is one who stays bought. But real politicians are always dependable. Their word is their stock in trade.

Seminars on dealing with difficult people are mostly filled with difficult people. Try looking in the mirror.

Jokes reveal pain and offer insight. Read the cartoons people tape to cubicle walls. They're often cries for help.

Creative Thinking, Problem Solving, Decision-Making

What do you know now that you wish you had known earlier? You can't replay the past, but the lesson might be useful in the future?

Failure is essential to all creative endeavors. Learn to fail early, fail often, and fail cheaply.

What's half of thirteen? A mathematician would say 6.5, but a graphic designer might say "thir" or "teen." The answer depends on the goal.

There's always a question that will illuminate key problems if asked early enough. Try on lots of questions to find the right one.

Fortunately, doing the right thing and the smart thing are usually the same thing. Ethics and self-interest often go hand-in-hand.

An often overlooked way to overcome procrastination: delegation. Is there some way you can get someone else to do it for you?

You are not there to do what the customer (or your boss) says. You're there to do what your he or she *wants.* They aren't always identical.

Real life seldom conforms to the clean, crisp edges of a model. Models are useful, but don't confuse the map with the territory.

Always identify the "good enough" point, even if you don't settle for it. How can you exceed expectations if you don't know what they are?

There are two ways to learn from experience: Have an experience, learn. Or find someone else who's had the experience and learn from that.

SideWise Thinkers know that reality is nuanced and complex. Beware the person who claims to explain it all in 140 characters.

"Known knowns, known unknowns, unknown unknowns." Rumsfeld missed one: unknown knowns, things to which our perceptual biases blind us.

You don't procrastinate because you're a "procrastinator," you procrastinate for a reason. Knowing why is essential to overcoming the block.

Creativity trainers mostly teach you how to generate ideas. Useful, but inspiration's only 1%. The rest (the hard part) is follow through.

The Godzilla Principle: Baby monsters are easier to kill than the full-grown variety. Some solutions come with expiration dates.

If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing badly. That's why we practice what we care about: we start bad, then work up.

Models aren't true or false; they're useful or not useful. A map of Chicago may well be accurate, but in New York City it's not very useful.

Inertia, friction, and entropy are universal: they affect people and organizations as well as physical objects.

Think "both-and" instead of "either-or." People want seemingly opposite things all the time. Often, they achieve them.

Friends and Enemies

Map the political environment around you by identifying allies, opponents, neutrals, fellow travelers, and enemies.

Two factors determine how people treat you: (a) the quality of the relationship and (b) the degree of common interest.

Allies have common interests and a good relationship, so they tend to win when you win. Use them wisely.

Opponents have conflicting interests, but a good relationship. They're valuable; always treat them with respect and fairness.

Fellow travelers have a common interest but a poor relationship. Trust them only as far as their own self-interest takes them.

Enemies have conflicting interests and a poor relationship. Negotiate interests in the short term; build relationships over time.

Neutrals shade in all four directions. Some are best left on the fence; others need to be lured into the game.