Friday, July 11, 2014
Morning walk - 1.21mi, 22:58, 9:46am
Haven't walked in a week or done any exercise really. I did go on a family walk, but I don't remember which day that was. I keep thinking I'll get around to exercising and keep finding reasons not to:
WHAT WENT WELL - Our team was extremely flexible. We quickly adapted to our evolving understanding of the client's needs and kept a positive attitude about making adjustments to project tactics.
WHAT DID NOT GO WELL - The value of our team's contributions were not well-understood by key stakeholders. IN-OUR-CONTROL: We could have insisted that we confirm our project sponsor expectations as early as possible in the project. OUT-OF-OUR-CONTROL: The project sponsor was not available to us and did not understand what our project was for (even though she apparently approved paying for it).
LESSONS LEARNED - When a project starts, it is common to have questions about the requirements and target outcomes that will be valuable to the project sponsor and other key stakeholders. The contract/statement of work (SOW) is meant to provide clarity on project requirements and goals, but in most projects involving strategy consulting services, there are many diagnostic questions that may need to be answered to get a clear picture of what will truly provide value for the client organization.
Our typical approach to dealing with ambiguous requirements is to make some assumptions and infer what the writer of the SOW meant. Then we take our understanding - our interpretation - of what is required for the project and present it to the project sponsor (ideally) to have him/her either validate our interpretation or give us better/different guidance to follow.
Based on our experience with this client, we have learned that this typical proactive approach to confirming client goals and expectations may ultimately do more harm than good. A client must be able to articulate what success looks like from their perspective and what they want to achieve in their own words. We can help refine their vision statements and ask clarifying questions. But if we do not insist on having the client describe what they want in their own words, we may be obscuring a fundamental problem that can lead to the cancellation or failure of the project: If the client can't say what results they want to achieve, then it will be almost impossible to provide results that matter to them.
- Have to skip it in the morning because I wake up late and have to get to work
- Have to skip it in the evening because I'm hungry or tired or still working
- Skip it on the weekends because I'm busy doing other stuff with the family or I am in a lazy mood.
- I've decided that I am less concerned with losing weight than I am with creating an exercise/activity habit that will allow me to stay healthy and manage my weight. I've already tried (and achieved) the boot-camp weight-loss approach (via the Ideal Protein program), losing 60 pounds in four months. I've gained back almost 30 pounds now due to two main factors: eating whatever I feel like and not being active enough to burn off the excess calories. One day I may try harder to fix my diet and eat better, but for now, I want to focus on establishing an activity habit that will allow me to manage my weight.
- Having a plan or a theory to create a habit is not sufficient. I've read that I should start with a small achievable goal and use that to build momentum. So I will start today with this goal: For the next 7 days, I will do something active everyday for at least 10 minutes. For the following 7 days, I will do something active everyday for 20 minutes. Fourteen days from now I'll check my progress and set a new goal.
- Mary called me this morning to ask about options for PC virus protection software. Even though I was only half-awake, I was happy to be able to help her by providing a recommendation based on my experience answering the same question for myself ("What anti-virus software should I use?"). Questions occur to me in all aspects of my life and I do what anyone else does to find an answer. I search the Internet for solutions that others have found and documented. If that doesn't work, I ask actual people I know for their recommended solutions or guidance for finding a solution elsewhere. I could use my blog (or better, a new blog) to document questions I've been able to answer. It would be a useful reference for me to jog my memory and it may be helpful to others. Certainly it would save me time when I try to answer a question that I've answered many times before. I'm sure this is not an original, earth-shattering idea, but I think the real value to me would be creating and maintaining a compendium of answers to my questions.
- I thought about how to summarize Lessons Learned after a project.
- First, describe what went well and any thoughts on why you were successful.
- Second, describe what did not go we well along with any thoughts on what contributed to the problems you encountered. Be sure to distinguish between the problems that were within your control and those things that were out of your control. For problems that were within your control to fix, describe what you did and what you should have done (if, given the benefit of hindsight, you think you should have done anything differently).
- Finally, describe what you would do differently in a similar situation in the future given what you learned from this project. To do this, it is important to structure these statements to include the following components:
- Describe the situation and the typical approach used to handle the situation
Example
- Describe how that situation should be handled based upon what you have learned - has your experience shown that the typical approach really works or have you found a different, better way to handle the situation
WHAT WENT WELL - Our team was extremely flexible. We quickly adapted to our evolving understanding of the client's needs and kept a positive attitude about making adjustments to project tactics.
WHAT DID NOT GO WELL - The value of our team's contributions were not well-understood by key stakeholders. IN-OUR-CONTROL: We could have insisted that we confirm our project sponsor expectations as early as possible in the project. OUT-OF-OUR-CONTROL: The project sponsor was not available to us and did not understand what our project was for (even though she apparently approved paying for it).
LESSONS LEARNED - When a project starts, it is common to have questions about the requirements and target outcomes that will be valuable to the project sponsor and other key stakeholders. The contract/statement of work (SOW) is meant to provide clarity on project requirements and goals, but in most projects involving strategy consulting services, there are many diagnostic questions that may need to be answered to get a clear picture of what will truly provide value for the client organization.
Our typical approach to dealing with ambiguous requirements is to make some assumptions and infer what the writer of the SOW meant. Then we take our understanding - our interpretation - of what is required for the project and present it to the project sponsor (ideally) to have him/her either validate our interpretation or give us better/different guidance to follow.
Based on our experience with this client, we have learned that this typical proactive approach to confirming client goals and expectations may ultimately do more harm than good. A client must be able to articulate what success looks like from their perspective and what they want to achieve in their own words. We can help refine their vision statements and ask clarifying questions. But if we do not insist on having the client describe what they want in their own words, we may be obscuring a fundamental problem that can lead to the cancellation or failure of the project: If the client can't say what results they want to achieve, then it will be almost impossible to provide results that matter to them.
Labels: Walks
posted @ 11:45 AM
