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From our four part series, "The Foundations of Mediocrity"
The bread and butter of all the foundations of mediocrity, the one that most of us really commit our mindlessness to, is the schedule. Scheduling your project, that can absorb almost all of your craziness. And with a single fell swoop, at that! It can paralyze your thinking, blunt your imagination, break your creativity and reduce your procreativity to zero. The schedule is a potent nullifier. It is the queen of all mediocrity fountains.
billg: Where did you get this date?
jimmc: Out of my ass?
Jim McCarthy: Welcome to the McCarthy Show.
Michele McCarthy: "Foundations of Mediocrity."
Jim: Yes. "Foundations of Mediocrity." And Michele, what are the four foundation stones of mediocrity?
Michele: Well Jim, there's budgeting.
Jim: The budget. Right, we have talked about the budget.
Michele: There's scheduling.
Jim: We have not talked about scheduling.
Michele: There's reorgs.
Jim: We have talked about reorgs and given a solution.
Michele: And there's the quarterly analyst's meeting.
Jim: Well, the bread and butter, the one that most of us really commit our mindlessness to, is the schedule. Scheduling your project, that can absorb almost all of your craziness. And with a single fell swoop, at that! It can paralyze your thinking, blunt your imagination, break your creativity and reduce your procreativity to zero. The schedule is a potent nullifier. It is the queen of all mediocrity fountains.
Michele: In fact, if companies only implemented scheduling - out of the four foundations - they could probably achieve all their mediocrity goals.
Jim: Well, certainly they could at least hit the mainstream level of mediocrity that way. Of course, you wouldn't want to be too pronouncedly mediocre. Mediocre is a sort of thing that more of it makes it less. I mean, you could find yourself greatly mediocre. But anyway, the existential properties of mediocrity shall be a topic of another amazingly amusing podcast. So what, pray tell, do we have against the schedule?
Michele: My primary complaint about scheduling is simple: that people are willing to proceed as if they can look into a crystal ball about the future. They act as if they can plan out the future. As if they can control the future. It's the control part that really gets to me. It bugs me because it's a false belief. It's simply not true. You can not control the future, and the belief you can is just so destructive of creativity, teamwork, spontaneity and interaction among one another. This false belief is just a complete energy zapper, an unwholesome energy sink.
Jim: Well, pretending like the schedule is meaningful; I just love that, really. If it weren't for the ultimate evil that results, I'd say we should schedule all day long because it is the most amusing and ridiculous way to spend your time. You can imagine that if it weren't so dark ultimately, it would just be a total gas.
Michele: Yes.
Jim: You have a great line that you said one time, and I've been using it ever since. One of the problems (you said) with the schedule is it gives you the idea that you can take that long.
Michele: Yes.
Jim: And that is the bad, dark side of the schedule. Most things can be done pretty quickly if you're not talking about them, if instead you're actually doing them.
Michele: If you have the intention to get it done, you can get it done.
Jim: The question to ask is not "how long will it take?" or "when will we be done?" Those are not answerable questions. Here is a good question: Why isn't it done now? How can we get it done tomorrow?
Michele: Right.
Jim: Those are good questions to ask. And instead, what we ask is, "Are we on schedule?"
Michele: Right.
Jim: And then we discuss that. We discuss and discuss and discuss. And we don't know whether we are on schedule because we made up the schedule. In one meeting, I remember, I think Bill Gates asked me a question. We had a project review, and he goes, "Where did you get that date?"
Michele: Yeah.
Jim: And I answered, "Out of my ass?"
[laughing]
Jim: But with a question mark at the end.
Michele: Well, that's good that you told the truth.
Jim: Well, yeah, I was among friends. But I was right, you know? I mean, that's exactly where all these dates come from. Or, like when they say, "Let's buffer the schedule." And then they do. [deep voice], "Oh, isn't that clever of you!"
Michele: Yeah.
Jim: Yes, well, just go ask the person who is working, "How long is it going to take you," and then double it for good measure and safety.
Michele: When you buffer the schedule, you are just saying it's going to take that much longer because people will take as long as you say it can take. They won't make it go faster. So it will take at least that amount of time..
Jim: And consider when you're buffering a schedule, you're using irrational numbers. You're doing arithmetic on irrational numbers. It's not going to work out.
Michele: Right.
Jim: You double the thing that didn't make any sense to begin with.
Michele: Right. It means you don't know, and if you do this buffering scheme, it means you know you don't know how long it's going to take.
Jim: Well, it's trying to quantify the degree of mistrust in people's crazy estimates.
Michele: Well, yeah, the whole thing is just crazy.
Jim: Well, say we double it... and then where does the doubling stop, anyway? Then the next guy up the line, like the manager, he says, [with a deep voice] "Well, the team says this, I'm going to double it for when I tell my boss."
Michele: Yeah.
Jim: And so: double, double, double, double, double and pretty soon you've got a real schedule going.
Michele: This reminds me of my first experience with schedules in the quote "real world", which was, I'm hired out of graduate school...
Jim: In the quote "real world."
Michele: ...into Microsoft, that is, as a program manager, and I'm invited to this all hands meeting, where all the project managers and all the development leads show up in this meeting with the big boss, who is there.
Jim: This all sounds very primitive. Sounds like some sort of tribe you're talking about. Like do they blow a bugle for the all hands meeting?
Michele: The All Hands Meeting.
[laughing]
Jim: [announcing] "All hands, all hands, all hands."
Michele: The first week I'm nervous, I'm just out of college. I'm not sure what is going on.
Jim: It is kind of cool to go to an all hands meeting.
Michele: And I'm watching it...
Jim: with the big boss.
Michele: And I had this feeling like something isn't quite right, but I can't put my finger on it. I can't... it just... it just doesn't give me a warm, fuzzy feeling to be in this meeting. And then I noticed the development leads just keep giving reasons why things are going to take longer than they thought they were going to take.
Jim: Hmm.
Michele: And it's just kind of going over and over that. And then I go the next week, the same thing. It's going to take even longer than the last time we said it's going to take even longer than we thought it was going to take.
Jim: Uh?huh.
Michele: And after about three weeks of this, I'm thinking "OK, something is not right here." And then I noticed that one development lead, he uses Microsoft Project, so he's got those Gantt charts, where they are really detailed charts of how the project is going, with the little triangles...
Jim: The little boxes and circles.
Michele: ... that show dependencies and how long each task takes and stuff.
Jim: And when you slip, all you have to do is plug in the slip, that this one slipped by this much and it recalculates how late you are in total, automatically.
Michele: So after three weeks...
Jim: As if that were hard.
Michele: ... after three weeks, I notice that every week this little chart he's making, extends for two or three weeks more than it did..
Jim: Oh, you mean it gets a little longer.
Michele: The project is going to take an infinite amount of time, at this rate.
Jim: Right, right, right.
Michele: And then I knew for sure something was up. [laughing] But I didn't really get a handle on it until I had a manager who helped me wake up...
Jim: So how did you diagnose it? What was the problem?
Michele: The problem was that since that one guy had that Gantt chart that looked really fancy, with all the dependencies that showed up, all the tasks...
Jim: Did it have colors, colors...
Michele: Yes. Since he had that, everyone deferred to that piece of paper, like that was the truth, because he had it under "control." Like he knew and could depict all this information so it must be true because he made this whole chart. And people thought "that's how you do project management." And I think that people still believe that today. Many people.
Jim: What strikes me as fundamentally wrong is that they're believing falsehood.
Michele: Right.
Jim: Because all you have to do is go to the very beginning of the chart where someone asks someone else, "How long is this going to take?", and you know they can't tell you. I defy anybody to tell me how long something is going to take, really. Now you can estimate stuff, and have goals, but that's a lot different than "the schedule", which is a fictional deal that enables you to avoid doing what you're supposed to do, basically.
Michele: Right.
Jim: Because the schedule won't allow it. And that's why all the development leads and the program managers... they're all posturing with respect to the schedule. [deep voice] "OK, well no we can't do it"... "well, gee, that's a great idea, we ought to do that, but the schedule won't allow it." "It's 'cause the budget won't allow it" or "we don't have enough headcount."
Any shortage that you believe in is probably not one that is true.
Michele: And then the other thing that happens is, and this is another one of my pet peeves....
Jim: With your pet peeves, you are kind of like a lady with too many cats. You've got a house full of pet peeves. But go ahead.
Michele: Well, I do like cats.
Jim: But you are easily peeved with folly. And that is appropriate, so I've got to backpedal out of this one, somehow.
Michele: No, that's all right.
Jim: What was your pet peeve? I interrupted...
Michele: Let's say some project is supposed to be done January 1st. That is the date they pick, six months ahead of time or a year ahead of time.
Jim: Well, that would be when all the critical paths, and pert charts come to fruition.
Michele: And then at some point someone realizes that, "We are never going to be done January 1st." They either realize that or they believe it.
Jim: I call that moment "hypocritical mass."
Michele: So then they do this thing. Sometimes they pull out their little Gantt chart things and they prove how it is going to take something like three extra months, or something like that. So then they just say, "It's going to be done April 1st instead of January 1st."
Jim: Well, they've got the chart.
Michele: Yep, they proved it on the Gantt chart. And then all of a sudden everyone just forgets that it was supposed to be January 1st. No one ever talks about that again, so it's like it didn't really happen, they are not really late because they have a new date.
Jim: The problem is you use the same system that you used before. The one thing that you know for sure is that your way of generating dates is bad. When you realize that you are late for something the only thing left of certainty in your life is that you do not know how to do dates. What do you do then?
Michele: Make a new date!
Jim: Exactly. With the same guy and the same chart.
Michele: Right.
Jim: You know, and the same green lines and blue lines. And it looks like you know what's going on.
You know something? Knowing what is going on is not as good as paradise. I would rather not know what is happening and be in paradise than know what is happening and be in hell. I don't know if that helps any.
Michele: I don't know if that is helpful or not.
Jim: What I am saying is the idea that you can predict what is going to happen is way less valuable then actually going somewhere good.
Michele: Yeah, just go there. Just decide where you want to go and go as soon as possible.
Jim: Just go to a good place. Make sure you get there, exactly. Put some elbow grease into it or whatever you need. But go to a good place rather than predicting how long it is going to take to get there. Does it really pay you to tell your children in the backseat of the car how long it is going to take to get there? I don't think so.
Michele: No, It never seems to help.
Jim: Instead, you want them, as they mature, increasingly comfortable with uncertainty.
Michele: You want them to get used to it.
Jim: Facts don't really come out of your ass. Fabricated certainty is a losing strategy.
Michele: Yes.
Jim: Because you can't really do it. As Yogi Bear [laughter] Yogi Bear said, [imitates Yogi Bear]. No, not Yogi Bear, Yogi Berra said, "Predicting is easy as long as you don't have to do it about the future." You've got to keep that in mind.
Michele: So I have a tip. Make sure that when your team signs up for a date that you remember that date. And that if that date ever gets extended out that you don't pick a new date and start pretending like that was the original date. Instead what you do is once that date comes and passes, a day later you say, "We are one day late." Two days after, you say, "We are two days late." And when people say, "Well, when is it going to be done?" You say, "I don't know, but we are three days late, we are four days late, we are five days late......."
Jim: And you say to all who ask, "You don't want to be asking me when it is going to be done, I was totally wrong. I am clearly bad at that."
Michele: "We were wrong." And I guarantee you people will be much more likely to get the project done as soon as possible and be less late then they would be normally. When they have to face that they are late, day by day.
Jim: As soon as that hits double digits or triple digits they start getting pretty grim and determined.
Michele: Another tip. Post this somewhere big where everyone must face it everyday. It says "one, two, three ...days late." You put the number up everyday so that people must face it.
Jim: [in boss voice] It is a foundation stone of mediocrity that you schedule everything in sight. I want some schedules coming out of you people.
Michele: Sick days, bathroom breaks....
Jim: Oh, yeah. Schedule everything. Account for every possible thing that is going to happen. I want to know if the coffee is going to overrun the pot.
Michele: And if you are wrong, well, you go right back to change the schedule to show how it was wrong.
Jim: Account for people getting sick and account for vacation time. You account for everything and then tell me when it is going to be done.
Michele: That's right!
Jim: I just want to know that everything, everything! has been accounted for. And it may take longer to account for each thing than it does to do the project, but my plan is to be a mediocre organization and that is going to require some damn scheduling! I am telling you. I want to see Pert charts going down that hallway from one side to the other. And Pert is a significant term in your lexicon.
Michele: I forgot the Pert. The Pert and the Gantt.
Jim: I want Perty and Gantty. Get me a Pert chart, get me a Pert chart as soon as you get up in the morning. You come into work, you start scheduling, you schedule all day long, you go home.
[laughter]
That is your job. I want schedules because I am after the mediocre organization. In search of mediocrity.
Michele: Because, Jim, the schedule is a foundation of mediocrity.
[end music]
Jim and Michele McCarthy Jim and Michele left successful leadership positions at Microsoft to form an innovative teamwork laboratory.
For the last 10 years they have rigorously studied and codified the
*best practices* for teams to get into and maintain a state of shared
vision. These best practices are called The Core Protocols. Jim is well-known for his humorous, inspirational and educational public speaking and the couple are co-authors of the books Dynamics of Software Development and Software for your Head. They also co-host a podcast focused on business issues called The McCarthy Show which some claim is addictive. They can also be heard on Microsoft's MSDN web site.
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