The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - Learning to Anticipate Project Chaos by way of the "Butterfly Effect" | PPP #79

Episode Date: July 6, 2021

We can follow a process and plan all day long, but we cannot control all the variables. So let's embrace the "Butterfly Effect" and lessen the impact of potential disaster in the later stages of a project.

Welcome to People Process Progress, Episode 79, Project Managers Should Embrace the Butterfly Effect. I'm your host, Kevin Pinnell. Thank you so much for coming back to the show. Some of you have probably heard of the Butterfly Effect, whether it was from the Ashton Kutcher movie that came out in 2004, I believe, or Chaos Theory that you heard from Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park, and we'll touch on that in a second. But essentially, it has to do with this quote, which many people have heard, or a very similar

one. Does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas? Well, I say, does a decision early in the project cause disaster in the later stages? On this episode 79, project managers should embrace the butterfly effect. We'll talk through that and about six key stages of every project where we need to consider the ripple effects or the butterfly effect that could take place later on. Please silence your cell phones, hold all sidebar conversations to a minimum, and we will get started with people process progress in 3, 2, one. So we're talking about the butterfly effect and how project managers should embrace it because in some instances, there's really nothing we can do about certain things like human nature, weather, et cetera. So just a quick background, there's tons of information and I use the americanscientist.org and washingtonpost.com had an article and I'll link those, but basically it has to do with Edward Lorenz, who is considered the father of chaos

theory, which really has to do with you can't really control nature. And I would include humans in there. They're just too complex to resolve, right? It has to do, it's tied in with Isaac Newton, who thought in the future, we could predict everything and know what's happening. There's too much unpredictability in the world, everyone. We know that. Look at last year, 2020, right? What happened both in people's human nature, their actions, good, bad, and different. So in this episode, though, we're going to focus on just the concept of it. And a great illustration of this, I mentioned Jeff Goldblum from Jurassic Park. So there's a scene early in the first movie where he's talking about chaos theory,

and he puts a drop of water on Laura Dern's hand. That's the actress that's there. And it goes different ways each time. Well, that's the same thing that happens with projects, right? Projects can go different ways depending on who's in what position and what decisions were made or not made. So that's what I want to touch on here is how does this butterfly effect, this one decision that makes a huge difference, whether good or bad down the road, in some key areas. And really what I'm going to talk about are just some stages that regardless of whether

you're doing an agile thing, a Six Sigma process improvement or building software, SDLC or waterfall, whatever, these kind of things are in a lot of projects, right? It's and here's the things. It's approval. It's kicking it off somehow. It's resourcing it. It's building and testing whatever you're going to do. It's going live.

And then it's handing that off, right? Because eventually, you're not going to be a project anymore. And people's day to day job is going to be this thing that you put in there, this device or the software or this process or whatever. And you as the project manager or process improver or change manager, are typically not going to be doing that same thing or doing that anymore. So let's go to the beginning of any project, any initiative, and what should really happen is first, you should get approval, right? We should determine as an organization, as a strategic thinking body, as a high reliable organization, team, et cetera, whatever you want to call it, is who is this thing really for? Who is this new device for? Who is this new process for? Who is this new staff org for? What is that? What is kind of that why? Why do we even

want to do this? Sometimes we think we want to do things and then we realize we don't later on. So upfront, if we can put as much into why we want to do something, and do we really know what we're getting into, right? So this butterfly effect thought of, do we really know if we spend this much money up front and then we keep spending this money on down the line that at the end of this, we're going to get our money's worth? That's almost impossible to predict, right?

Whether it's stocks or a project or something, but it's questions we should ask ourselves to at least understand this chaotic theory of while we're going to make the best decision, the best guess, the best estimate up front as we can, and then we'll just manage it along the way. Are we reacting to a sales pitch? That's a question any approving body of any project, of any amount of money, resourcing, et cetera, should be able to get a feel for, right? From the various pitches you'll get from companies, the bids you read, the look at it, everything is perfect in a PowerPoint and in a proposal. Let me say that again. Everything works

perfectly when it's on a document that's meant to sell you or your organization on something. That never happens. Now, it didn't happen for plans that I put together too, right? That's one of my lessons learned in life and in profession is this as good of a process as I could help facilitate and a plan we put together and as pretty as it is, it's wrong. It's immediately wrong. It's immediately out of date. Names are wrong.

Numbers are wrong. Something you can, gosh, you can ad nauseum edit that thing and mess around with it and get other eyes to look at it. But when you're looking at spending a lot of money, when you're doing an approval, when you're looking through things, get other opinions, right? Not just the opinion of the person who's selling you the thing. If you can talk to other clients, other people in the industry, that's what networking is all about, right? That unofficial discussion. But for approval, to help us embrace and manage this butterfly effect, this chaos theory that we know we can't control everything, we could at least up front understand who we're really

doing something for, why we're doing it. Do we understand what we're getting into? Because sometimes what we're getting into is not just monetary and it's not just stuff. It's changing the way our people do things. And do we know how our organization has typically reacted to change? We got to be really be ready for that. And so if we know that up front, we can front load some planning and focus on how we can help our organization, our teams embrace that change and make sure that we're not falling prey to a sales pitch, but rather the truly best option we know at the time, and we've weeded through or

waded through the very fancy, everything looks perfect kind of stuff, and ask those direct questions. And a way to do that, you know if you ask a good question, well, what if this bad thing happens? What's the backup plan? If the answer is, well, that never happens to us, then that's probably not a good thing. Every company, every organization, every product, every software, every person, whatever, should have some sort of backup plan, whether they've had to use it or not, and be able to quickly kind of pull from that and say, you know what? It's never happened, but we practice it, or we have a backup plan for it, or you know what? It's happened to us five times, and here's how we reacted to it. So you get that really good,

unfiltered, true answer. And if you're the ones in the room going through this approval process with those folks that are pitching you or with your own internal team, talk through all those kind of things and all those options. So with this approval, with these discussions, let's manage the ripple effect ahead of time. Another key moment to me that I think can have a ripple effect down the road or this butterfly effect is the kickoff, right? The kickoff plus the series of discussions that happen, whether it's a Zoom call or an in-person conference room, we'll get back to someday. But it's the initial meeting where you're with other stakeholders, your sponsors, those people ultimately in charge or responsible for this project, your boss, probably a bunch of folks who are managers of the folks you're going to ask for to help support the project. And this sets the tone very early on. So you want to set a good

tone. So right up front, folks can see that you're confident and competent, and you've done the research and you're pulling people together right from the very first time potentially that you're confident and competent and you've done the research and you're pulling people together right from the very first time potentially that you've ever met with people so that you don't have to work quite as hard to build their trust and build that relationship if you don't already have it, even though you will as a project manager, right? That's what we do the whole time. But if in this kickoff or even as part of that approval and proposal stuff, but in particular this kickoff meeting and series of discussions that lead up to it, be a leader right away. Do your research ahead of time so you have as many answers as you can.

You don't have to have all of them, but have as many as you can. This also sets the who's who. Right from the start, people know who's the sponsor, who's the project manager, who's the leader from whatever department. And then what kind of resources do you all think or know in partnership with your vendor partner or third party, or if it's all internal, do you think you need right away or upfront? This will probably change, right? There's this chaos theory right away. Right away, you think you need these resources. You think you probably need this many. And as you go through pretty much any project, you could be spot on. That's nice. And then at times you realize,

you know what, we need three more of this person, or we have three too many of these type of people, this type of resource. And that's okay. But again, you're planning for it up front, you're thinking about it up front, so you can manage that butterfly effect down the road. Do you have the right players? That's what we need to consider too. Do we have too many or do we have too few? Sometimes you can have too many cooks in the kitchen, right? And some of that is political. Some of it is practical because they are the owners, so to speak, or the leaders of the resource areas that you'll need. And so there's no getting around it. So you either have to learn how to facilitate and manage up with so many leaders involved,

or with less involved to pull them in and get their engagement when you need it to help push things over the line. And right in this kickoff meeting, if you're just open and objective and honest about, you know, looking up front at this project, here's what I think in conjunction with, you know, the sponsor that you've talked to and whoever else ahead of this kickoff meeting, you can help lay the groundwork ahead of time. So folks know I'm going to need your support from whatever level you're at from the C-suite or the directors or the managers or whomever. And if you have too many, thinking about how you can optimize it and how you can deliver that message to say, you know what,

we have great leadership, everyone's engaged, but it would be really helpful if we had one lead person for each area. Or if you have too few, we would really like to have your involvement to make sure we're building the system or the process or whatever we're doing. So calling on more leaders, more stakeholders and escalating. Remember, we talked about an earlier episode, escalation is not a bad word, right? It's a great tool to use, escalate to get more people when you need them, and escalate to maybe have less people or less direct push or involvement or optimize that push and just have those discussions. The other thing about kickoff is to really be honest with ourselves and the team is are we ready? Are we ready to set in motion

this chaos that is a project? Because while we like to think we're all neat and planned and we've got Gantt charts and we're having scrums and standups and all this. It's managing chaos, right? Because you can't control that nature, that human nature part of things that has to do that's tied with every task that's tied with every milestone that is or isn't going to do something. The technology will or won't work depending on that day. So I know I've been involved in meetings where I was a speaker and I got shut off twice and then I just couldn't connect and there was nothing I could do about it unless I owned the cable company and you know and even then it's just there's some things you can't manage you can't control so as part of your kickoff as part of this staying ahead of and embracing the butterfly effect

ask ourselves again we're at kickoff we're getting ready to ask for a bunch of people and stuff and commit all this. Are we truly ready and are we gonna go forward? And that's a good decision to get documented, right? Because it's nice we documented that we approved it and we got the funding, but with the information we know at the time for the kickoff, it's not a bad thing to revisit. Are we ready given all the stuff we just covered, right?

The objectives of this project, the funding, the organization we think we'll need based on resources, the timeline we're estimating that we're going to use on a Sunday day, right? We've got our perfect plan. Maybe also consider here's our plan if we lose the money or people or something like that, it could get pushed. So just put those considerations in there and then cue that up to make sure that, you know, and it's akin to in the all hazardous and managed world, that planning meeting where we go around the table and each of the section chiefs, we say, do you support the plan? Do you support the plan? And then finally, do you approve the plan? Not a bad thing to use in the, in the private sector, in the project world, right?

Director of X, do you approve the plan or do you support the plan? Director of Y, do you support the plan? Vice president, whomever, do you approve the plan? And then boom, then you're going. So we are setting up the small flap of the butterfly's wings with approval of our project. We're flying a little bit flower to flower now with this kickoff, right? As we're going to set all these events in motion. And now we need to resource this project. Resourcing, getting the right people and the right stuff early on as best we can, right? Because we're in this chaos theory project management where we can't control everything, but as best we can, will really set us up for success. The first big question, do we have the right team? Do we think we have the right team? And if we don't have them by name, based on what the vendor of this product or what we know this new process

is going to be, do we have all the people that we need or the skill sets that we're going to ask for in these different areas, these functional groups, which I really love using in projects to cover the areas that this outline of this plan or the way that they've done this before guides us to? How much do we need to train people up before we can even get started on the project, right? There's some projects, particularly software building, depending on what kind of thing it is, where you have to get your folks trained or trained and certified before you can even start work on it. So have you built that into your schedule? Have you considered that in your budget? Have you considered that in your overall timeline and your goals and your objectives? If not, that has to be there, right? That's part of our resourcing,

certainly part of budgeting as well. If we're direct hiring folks, are these people qualified to do the work that we're going to do during the project and then after the project? And if not, are we willing to absorb maybe their deficiencies in knowledge or experience or whatever area and we'll build them up while we do the project because we're going to supplement them maybe with other project managers or other administrative support or whatever it is. But that's something to think about when we're resourcing is, are all the folks we're relying on to finish their tasks, their work, help us meet these milestones. Are they ready to actually do that on their own? Or do they need a lot of support and structure and

handholding? And if so, that's fine, right? We've all needed that. We all need that at times, but we got to account for that so that we don't expect up front, a small butterfly wing flap. And then down the road, we realized this person was lost for half the project and they didn't ask for help. That's going to have tremendous detriment to the productivity and the quality of the project. Are they motivated? So if folks aren't qualified and we're willing to put in this money and this time to get them trained up, do they want to be here? Do they want to do this? Do they understand that down the road, we're going to be in a different state? You're going to be in day-to-day state.

And we'll touch on this when I talk about the handoff. But do they know what their career, what their job is going to be during the project and after the project? And are they motivated to do that? And as we're helping motivate them and support them to do that, do they have enough stuff to do what they need to do? Do we have enough devices or enough software licenses or enough servers or enough whatever it is?

And again, I'm in healthcare IT, project management, so that's that. But let's say this is public safety, right? And the project has replaced all the ladders. Do we have enough ladders? Do we have enough warranties? Do we have enough whatever it is, stickers that go on there, our branded things, right? What are all the things we need to do to label a device to track it to inventory it that's resourcing right we talk about people as resources which they are but

the stuff is resources as well and that's huge and then do we have the right things do we have new stuff that's gonna last a while do we have old stuff that's gonna expire soon because we got a deal because remember that approval piece where they sales pitch and said oh this product's great or it's cheaper so it was attractive then when we're trying to save money but now we have to buy new things that's all stuff we have to consider our upfront costs our ongoing costs resourcing includes money and facilities and people and stuff, as I say, right? Screwdrivers, widgets, blah, blah, blah, all that kind of stuff. So resourcing up front as thoroughly and accurately as we can

will get us back to a small flap of the butterfly's wings and away from that tornado because maybe we've managed chaos a little bit better. So this early decision of resourcing and costing and all that kind of stuff early in the project will really pay us dividends later on. So we've gotten approval. We've kicked off. We're really being proactive in our resourcing. Now we have to build this thing and test this stuff and this process and get this equipment out there. So how can we look up front to have minimal impact down the road?

Well, what model are we going to use for this? Do we have standards on the stages that we build a process or the stages that we build a system or a device? If not, let's look for industry best practices. And those vary depending on the industry that you're in. Or do you internally have those? So make sure that your project, if you're the PM, the project manager, the program manager, that you know what your internal processes are. Or you talk to the experts that you resourced.

They're going to help you with the build and the testing, right, of both, again, whether it's a process or whether it's a product, that you have your internal standards. And do we have standards? And what are they? And let's get the team educated on those standards. And let's share those out with the whole team, particularly the folks that are going to be charged with implementing them and working by them. And for us as project and program managers and leaders, we are going to then be the ones that have to hold folks accountable to those standards.

Do we manage our system changes or do we just let folks do whatever they want? Chaos and a system build is certainly going to cause disaster down the road. So we need to make sure that the right stakeholders are involved in every stage of those decisions, that they review the standards, that they are part of the discussions, that we look at, do we have time to do this? Do we have the resources? Is this important right now? Or is it nice to have? All these kinds of things when we're building are considerations that we have. And are we making standards as we go? I don't think there's anything wrong with that. As we're in this chaos of a project,

if we don't happen to have strong standards that we use across the board, are we good in making them as we go? There's some set things. We should, like I said, have the right people involved in the process that are the's some set things. We should, like I said, have the right people involved in the process that are the experts in that area. We should have another set of eyes, take a look at it and say, okay, did we talk to the other areas to make sure that there's no cross impact to them? If it has a certain level of impact, whether it's a lot of people or critical systems or processes, do we then need to have another layer of review with our leadership so they understand the big picture and say, yep, we understand this risk or we

understand where it is. We're going to make this decision and we support it and boom. And so track that and document it and get your processes documented just for now and then for the future because as we'll talk about in a couple steps, you're going to hand this off as a program or project manager and you're not going to be there anymore. So this team or folks from it are going to have to keep this going. And so to have those processes documented now that you're doing that and leaving it better than you found it, right, that's just a good life principle, is something that we want to make sure that we do. And I mentioned potentially escalating or needing to escalate for sign off,, who does get to sign-off

at what level? One quick reference I always go to because it's a reference that's used a lot or a sign-off level has to do with money, right? If something costs X amount, this level of person can approve it. If it's more than that, this next level has to do it. Well, you can bake that into also system build stuff or change request approvals or process improvement approvals, discussions, etc. Your leaders may have a more strategic view of the organization than the folks building the process or the system or the device. So they can help provide a better decision that's going to last longer and have a better impact. So not as much like we've talked about this butterfly effect where a flap of the wings is a tornado, which is bad,

but maybe a flap of the wings equals a sunny day instead. So this good strategic decision early on will help us down the road, not have bad outcomes, and will improve productivity instead of potentially making more manual processes where we then have to fix a decision we made because we didn't involve all the folks that we needed to. So when you're particularly in that testing phase of whatever it is that you're doing, the device you're building, the process you're improving, the software, the reorg that you're having, make sure that you get sign off from strategic thinking folks

or an array of folks that have vested interest in it and your stakeholders so that the outcome is better and we don't have to do as much rework down the road. We've approved, we've kicked off, we've resourced, we've built and tested to try the best we can manage this chaos that we're in in this project to reduce the effect of that butterfly's wings flapping so we don't have a tornado but maybe we have a cloudy day not quite a perfectly sunny day down the road now we got to go live with this process or this product or this you know these new people this new org or this you know software or something make a go live action plan directly

like the incident action plan from the all hazards world from incident command system stuff. I want to know who's going to be where, what their shifts are, where, you know, where do they need to report and with what equipment, what's their contact information, who's their supervisor, how do I call them? And then what are any special instructions that both they and anyone else reading the plan need to know on these days, we're going to do this. The next few days, we're going to have this schedule. All issues will be routed this way. Here's lunch, whatever.

But basically, whether it's a spreadsheet, a Word document, I've used both. Make sure that it's comprehensive and it's pretty easy to follow. If you're spread out geographically, just like we did in incident management, right? Have maps. Show people where the facilities are, where's the floor plan for the building and the rooms you're going to be in. All those are very helpful, right? Because again, if we front load folks with information, if we share that, if we do a briefing, just like the operational period briefing we do in the all hazards world and

tell folks, we're going to walk you through this plan. We're going to tell you where you need to go. We're going to give you the hours. We're going to tell you where lunch is. Then they don't have to worry about those things, and they can worry about this new process they put in place or this new software or this new device or this new organization and all the other stuff we've taken care of as good leaders and planners.

It really helps to know that who, what, where, when, how. So to the best of our ability, we've reduced the chaos for our team before they even step foot out the door to go to report on their day that they go live. Now, the other thing we need to look at is how long are these shifts? How long is this process? Are we upfront creating chaos in the way of that we're setting them up for fatigue, for burnout, right? When our minds and bodies get tired, we make more mistakes. We don't think through things the right way. Do we, when we resourced, did we staff up to be able to rotate people out

instead of just spreading them so thin because they have to work so many shifts? Are we monitoring them for stress? Are we looking at them? Are we saying, take a walk? Are we reassuring them it's not going to be perfect? Right? Just like this whole episode and the whole thing with chaos theory and the butterfly effect is we think with our plans, with planning that we can control everything, but we can't and that's okay. So make sure the team knows that's okay. Now, does that mean you can just hang out and not work hard? Absolutely not. All of us need

to be doing that. However, when the ticket's not perfect, or the process has a hiccup in it, or the system needs fixed, or the data is not perfect, it's expected, right? Because we've embraced the butterfly effect ahead of time and the imperfections that all of us as humans have. And more importantly, we told the team that so that they don't take all this pressure on themselves and just feel horrible about not being perfect. Make sure they know that when we give them that briefing from the kickoff, right? All the time they know we're all going to work hard. We're all going to work together. But as much as we try and do this perfectly, it's not going to be perfect. And that's all right. We're here for you. But we also have high expectations that if you're getting in

over your head, if you're dealing with someone that's troublesome, we'll say that you let us know that you escalate to us that you ask for help. Because the other thing about, you know, not knowing the storm that's going on within somebody is that from outside, we don't know someone can look like they're doing great, and they're about to lose it. So check in on your people. A good, how you doing? How's your family? Maybe not even related to this project. Whether it's a chat or an in-person, if you can, or a call or whatever, that makes a huge difference when we're going live and everybody's stressed and this new thing they worked so long on is out in the world now. Try and stay ahead of the chaos and the stress and the burnout that may happen with these long days and long hours.

So we've gone live because we've built and tested this thing, that we resourced well as best we could, that we kicked off, set realistic expectations, determined that, yep, we're ready. We had approval for it, made sure we're getting the best product, the best process or whatever it is. Now though, for us as project and program managers, we got to hand this thing off. We've gotten to a point where we went live, it's out there. We set up support processes, agreements, and we're out, right? And a huge principle, and I've fallen prey to this, is to fall out of love with your project or your program. You get into it, you work with people for a year or more, right?

You create bonds. But we're, as I stated in an earlier episode, we're the Ronin, right, of the business world. We travel around, we work, whether it's traveling within our organization, project to project, program to program. And now it's time for us to break that bond nicely, keeping the relationships, not burning bridges. But that's part of what we need to do and make sure that we know that we've helped plan with all our stakeholders who takes over, right? Who's now going to have operational control of this thing, this process, this product, the software, this new org, because it's not going to be us. And it's not going to be the sponsors anymore, right? It may be if it falls under the department. But a lot of the folks that are on that project team that have been working together that have helped streamline things as we build this new thing are going to step away. And now it's day-to-day

business, right? And so now we have to pull ourself away from that and get ready for the next thing, but not before we make sure that the support handoff is set up well. Do all the teams that know they're going to take on the support have the training? Do users have the ability to call or put a web ticket in or however they need to contact your support to get help if they need it, whether they want something changed or something's broken? And who are the contacts that own this now? And are they documented in this, whether it's like a service level agreement, like an SLA or whatever kind of documentation you and your organization use? Make sure that handoff is there because I still get emails and phone calls from projects and programs I was part of like two or three years ago, right? And I just have to remind

folks, hey, remember, we handed that off. It's this group now, right? So you still help. But we want to have that document because even two, three years, we got to remember who did we hand that off to? Who owns that now? And if we do this up front, before we hand it off, then there's less chaos when people get questions down the road, and they only remember that you were the project or program manager, so they're going to call you, right? And that's cool for a quick reference, but not to actually get some stuff done now. Is the org ready for this handoff, right? Have we reached a point where we don't need to be project ties anymore, where we can say, you know what, now it's time for this team to own it and hand it off. And just

like we got verbal approval, written approval or electronic approval to kick off, we're going to do the same thing when we close this out, right? Because now the kid gloves are gone. What I mean by that is you all know if you've been part of a project team or leading the team, or again, you know, a sponsor or a leader of the whole org. During project time, it's pretty expedited process to get things approved to ask for help to escalate, right? Because you have kind of an encapsulated group of people that have been brought together. Right? Remember, there's conscripts on project teams that check out one of my earlier episodes on that where people have been brought together for a specific purpose for a short amount of time or a long amount of time, but it's temporary

to get a new process, product, program, people, whatever in place. And now that's going away. So now we're going to be in the real world, right? Where you have to use the existing support processes or the new ones that you put in place that latch on to your existing processes as you step away and as everybody else from the project steps away, unless they happen to be the owner of this thing. And so now you are going to resubject the team back into the chaotic world where hopefully all the discussions and decisions we had earlier are having positive ripple effects and minimal tornadoes are being created from the earlier decisions or small butterfly wing flaps that we made months or a year ago or however long your project or process was.

So any program or project is going to be subject. And anytime that I've seen, and I would imagine for you all out there as well, and you all let me know people process progress at gmail.com or people process progress.com is going to be subject to chaos. We're going to get hit by this butterfly effect where we're going to regret or remember decisions we made way early that are now storming into us where we go, oh my gosh, how or why did we make that decision? So my two cents for the price of this free podcast is if any project or program we can shore up our approval process and decisions,

our kickoff discussions, our resourcing methodologies for our people and stuff and budgets and facilities, if we can either follow our build and test model or create a really solid one as we go or borrow one or just make sure we are following a process together, that we have prepared people to go live, to get out there, to handle their stress, to work these shifts, and that we have then had a solid discussion and planning about now handing off to operations this projectized effort that we had, then I think we can minimize the butterfly effect on this project, on the organization, on the team, and on ourselves. I hope that you all are doing well out there. I thank you so much for listening

to this and other episodes. Connect with me on Instagram at People Process Progress, and same on Facebook. PeopleProcessProgress at gmail.com is an email. PeopleProcessProgress.com for back episodes about me a little bit. Some other things. Please share this show. It's a good way to get word out if this is helpful. If you find it helpful, I hope you do. And I hope you all are enjoying a return to normalcy,

getting out in this warm weather. If it's warm where you are, hopefully it is, and the weather's clearing up a bit. I saw the fireworks on July 4th last evening with my family, and there were tons of people around, and it was pretty cool to, one, see those fireworks, but be outside around folks. Please stay safe out there. Wash your hands, and Godspeed.