When a project hits a snag – run to the problem (advice from my administrator at a partnering meeting with our contractor in 2019.)
I often say, problems don’t fix themselves, they only get worse over time.
Borrowing a phrase from Jocko Willink, Default Aggressive is the best way to tackle issues (though one of the choices is may be to actively choose to let things play out for a moment).
Remember the hidden costs of waiting for a perfectly confirmed answer. Colin Powell had the 40-70 rule. Don’t make a rash decision, but waiting for all the information can lead to a lost opportunity. (Of course Powell famously made a serious error in the yellow cake presentation, so the risks are also real.)
A leadership position frees you from long work, but you owe the team the risk of owning the hard work. (As soon as I write a blog post saying I’m over Seth Godin, I come right back to one of his key concepts).
It’s the last day of (fiscal year) 2023! Pop the bubbly!
One of the perks of working for the State is regaining seasonality in my professional life (as opposed to the relentless race of private practice). We live on an artificially smooth planet, where seasonal rhythms are dampened in air conditioned boxes and food is always fresh with the magic of global logistics.
Of course I can’t fully escape the zeitgeist, my seasonality is not based on nature. I work under the overlay of a legal calendar.
Nevada’s legislature meets every two years, and they just completed the 2023 session, approving another slate of new projects. We’re off to the races, setting up projects, interviewing consultants, starting design.
In a few months our projects will be humming along and we’ll start due diligence on the next slate of Agency project requests. The Spring of even numbered years is our the busiest season, as we run between facilities, meeting with agency staff, discussing their needs, and estimating costs.
Once the budgeting is over, we get a slight breather to merely manage projects. Before you know it, the next election will have concluded, the new Legislature will start their new session at the beginning of each odd numbered year, and we wait for another wave of new projects at the start of the next fiscal year.
A fond goodbye to FY23, it was too busy! Unfortunately, FY24 looks to be only more hectic.
Hmmm, I just realized I have nine more bienniums in my career. Let’s make this one count!
~
Some Links
Taegan MacLean started a series of monthly One Word documentary videos mixing his contemplations on life as a father and the early passage of his own father paired with interviews with interesting folks around Toronto. One of the privileges of the internet is watching the start of amazing projects!
I have no idea how Sam Kahn has the ability to range so widely and deeply, but Castalia is a one-man intellectual journal publishing deep provocative essays every other day.
On Saturday Mornings, Charlene Storey hosts a community post of “Everyday Magic” that have been a highlight of my weekends. Her Haver & Sparrow letters are gentle reminders to work diligently in the face of difficulty. She dances beautifully on that delicate line of being kind to oneself while avoiding self-indulgence.
I started this article three years ago. For better or worse that task management system has atrophied. I’m keeping the old parts (in italics) as brainstorming fodder for anyone attempting to create their own complicated systems.
~
The key components of my task management system are:
Immediate Capture
Digital Curation
Daily Spreadsheet(s)
Weekly and Monthly Review
Immediate Capture
The first step is to write it down. Anywhere. I jot down things as they pop into my head and as they come up in conversations.
I prefer a notebook, but if I’ll use my phone if I must. Pen and paper gets ideas out of my head faster than a smartphone keyboard. In a pinch, I use Apple Reminders for immediate capture on the road, but I find it sluggish and I hate that it looks like I’m texting someone outside of the meeting.
I’ve settled on a 6″x9″ Steno notebook. I also keep a 4″x8″ Reporter notebook in the car for taking notes in the field, I prefer the width of the Steno, but the Reporter fits in my back pocket. The most important feature is that the notebook lies flat while open because it should always be open. It’s only closed when you first get it and when you file it away for good.
These notebooks are ephemeral objects. I never reference them after they’re done — I rarely even reference old pages, except to double check that of all todo’s have been crossed off. I use a green highlighter to signify that the task has been either completed or transfered to my digital task management system.
Digital Curation
My primary task management system is on the computer. Every day, I clear through my notebooks and my phone and move work related tasks into Microsoft Outlook and personal tasks onto Apple Reminders.
As a project manager, I live in Microsoft Outlook. I’ve tried other software but the seamless integration between email and task management is invaluable. As an Inbox Zero bro, it’s critical to quickly flag emails to turn them into a future reminder, which lets me archive them into the appropriate project folder. I never use the Inbox proper for task management.
Whenever I input a task or flag an email, I always give it a date. Normally, I use the default options in Outlook: Today, Tomorrow, This Week (Saturday) Next week (Saturday). If it’s not urgent I’ll set the date as July 4 or December 25 to push it into far into the future.
When I look at my tasks in outlook, I can quickly see the immediate todos, this week’s tasks, what needs to be done in the next half month, and long term projects when I scroll to the bottom of the list. I also categorize the emails/tasks by project. By assigning colors, I can grok which projects are falling behind at a glance.
(When I was working on construction administration for my college building, I kept a separate project board on Asana, which was useful for coordinating with the architect, but I’ve found it unnecessary for smaller projects.)
For personal tasks I do something similar in Apple Reminders. The only difference is that I have more daily recurring tasks (exercise, bring lunch, floss, etc.) and I don’t add dates to long-term “nice to do someday” ideas.
Daily Spreadsheet— (I’ve stopped this practice)
The next step of my system is to use a daily spreadsheet. It started it to track of my hours, and then I added key metrics, growing into a baroque document (before becoming a simple time tracker again).My mornings start with a review of the AM checklist (noting metrics from the day before) and then a quick scan of email. Once completed, I’ll prioritize the tasks in MS Outlook and my day begins in earnest. I use spreadsheet to center myself, at the start of the day, after lunch, and at the end of the day — replaying the events and then calling a wrap, turning off my brain for the night.
Weekly and Monthly Review — (I’ve also stopped this practice, only keeping the 1-on-1’s with my boss on Monday mornings. This weekly meeting minimizes how often I interrupt him during the week and is just enough centering for my own work. Maybe I should restart a monthly sweep of my personal core values to become more contemplative about my efforts.)
On Friday mornings I take an hour to review the week. I run through Outlook, set up the weekly spreadsheet for next week, skim my personal core values statement, conduct a postmortem of the past week, and set the agenda for my weekly check in with my supervisor. Once that’s completed, I’ll pick up the remaining tasks for the week to end strong. Fridays are always nice in that they are dead quiet, allowing for focused concentration or an early out. For the last friday of the month I conduct a monthly postmortem where I reflect on the entire month.
Conclusion
As may be implied from what has survived the test of time, the most important parts are the immediate capture of tasks and the systematic curation of the work.
You might have noticed that I’ve been influenced by David Allen’s Getting Things Done fan. If so, please also note that that I’ve dispensed with all of the complexity of his system beyond his heavy emphasis on immediate capture. Indeed, I jettisoned most of my own complex superstructure over the years.
Designing systems are hard. Things look good on paper, but they rarely survive the long passage of time. But what does survive must be rigidly followed. You must be absolute on your system, otherwise you won’t trust it and will totally fall apart.
Good luck handling your chaos!
~
For giggles here is the old Review Checklist in my “Core Values Document” (that I don’t use anymore)
Moment
Immediate Capture – notebook to outlook/reminders
Stop and Systematize whenever there is grit
Daily
Morning Evaluation (incl email scan)
Morning Contact
Morning Email Scan – but do focused work
Post Lunch pondering (if not before lunch)
Post Lunch Email purge
Evening Evaluation
Let myself relax at night, but avoid youtube rabbit hole
Weekly
Set up the next week
Clean Outlook Tasks
Clean Email / Calendar
Open the Weekly Folder
Skim this Core Values Document
Fill Out Weekly Review
Set up Weekly Spreadsheet for next week (do timesheets)
Sort the next week’s tasks
Clean Desk and Box’o’Death
Quarterly
Reset Goals
Revisit this Core values Document
~
Some Links
Sherman Alexie finds the universal in the mundane. His poems and essays reveal our shared experience as strangers making our ways through a disorienting world. If I was ever tempted by a writer’s Faustian bargain, it would be for his eye and his voice.
Elissa grabs my heart and refuses to let go. There is a gentle power that courses through her Poor Man’s Feast. Not to be missed.
George writes a thoughtful essay about a painting in Art Every Day. I have no idea how he keeps it up, but each piece is insightful and provocative.
Rune stone, Korpbron, Juresta, Södermanland, Sweden, 1899, Erik Brate
~
Thanks for reading this Owner PM’s Letter! Justus Pang, RA
Resignations are tricky. There’s no good way to quit, but there is a right way to leave.
Email-only is unprofessional. If someone really wants that new job, then part of the price is sucking it up and chatting to the boss live, preferably in person.
However, one of my resignations was over the phone since the owner of the company lived in another state. That was awkward. He was a miffed that I didn’t wait for his next visit to town, but I wasn’t going to delay a 30% pay raise for the propriety of an in-person announcement. (Post COVID, I’d have scheduled it via videoconference, but it wasn’t an option at the time. We did have a good in-person exit interview before I left.)
On the other hand, the employee doesn’t bear all of the blame for quitting the wrong way. Such a misstep implies that there is a problem in the firm culture. If the person had been at the office for a significant period, then they weren’t mentored by experienced colleagues and had not developed a trusting relationship with their supervisor. If they are relatively new, then the hire was a cultural misfit and likely a mistake in the first place.
Relationships have been fraying in our fragmented hyper-digital age. It’s no surprise that the American work culture is suffering as well. Resignation blunders are a balancing of the scales. Corporations have been treating employees as disposable for the past few decades — why would it be a surprise that people are treating employers as immediately quittable?
My sister was laid off via a Sunday night email. She didn’t know it until her badge was locked out on Monday morning. Two wrongs don’t make a right, but could I judge her harshly if she quits her next job via Slack?
I still advise someone to quit in person. But this expectation can’t survive if employers continue upon this path towards a faceless gig-economy. Corporate HR has figured out that writing letters are less stressful than personal meetings. Why shouldn’t employees make that same discovery?
If firms want their work to be more than mere transactions, then bosses have to start modeling the relationship they want reciprocated.
~
On a brighter note, my former intern in private practice just quit his job to join my division.
His supervisor was extremely gracious. She even said that she would have fired him to force him to take this opportunity!
In our era of bad feelings, we should remember that most folks, staff and management, are trying to do right by their colleagues — even when the system is pushing us all to act otherwise.
Now that I’m WFH again…I took a moment to schedule my ideal work day.
After doing a 4×10 schedule at the office for the past five months, I decided to schedule for 9 hour workdays for the return of a five day week at home. The extra work hour gives me a flexible hour (or commute time) on any given day, or a half-day Friday.
5-7: Exercise, Read, Write
7-9: Work (2 hours)
9am Breakfast
10-2: Work (4 hours)
2pm Lunch
3-6: Work (3 hours)
6-9: Kids, Dinner, Music, Draw
9pm Sleep (8 hours)
Of course there’s no chance it will work as planned — I’m already scheduled for four site visits next week!
I’m curious if any of this silly, mundane dream of middle life pans out.
Two years ago, a third of Basecamp (now 37signals) quit after the owners suddenly shut down the DEI committee and banned all political talk on their internal chat. I’m certain that number was inflated because they offered a generous separation package of up to six month’s pay to those who quit.
I’m not going to argue the merits of those decisions, but there are three lessons from the drama worth highlighting. Two lessons relate to our craft as Owner Project Managers, the third is a question that I ponder whenever I think about my career.
Communication
The owners should not have announced the policy change via a blog post. The staff would have objected to the policy change no matter how it was delivered, but it sure made things worse. The ham handed delivery approach blew any chance at keeping the benefit of doubt within the team.
As an OPM, I’ve had three calls with firm principals to discuss concerns about their teams’ performances. Each of those old heads knew how to play the game — I felt amazing after each of those calls. Smooth motherfuckers.
The Basecamp owners forgot that they owe the same charm towards their employees when instituting big, unpopular changes. An employee serves at the pleasure of the employer, but they can walk. The transaction cuts both ways.
Your farts *do* stink
As owners it’s easy to forget that people have to act like they enjoy your presence. They respond quicker and laugh harder at your jokes when you’re their cashflow. The mass exodus shows that Basecamp wasn’t as utopian or attractive as their owners thought it was; their business books were more aspirational than descriptive.
I’ve seen this dynamic as an employee. The boss deludes themselves into believing their place is more than a job. Mission—Family—Culture—Movement—etc. Let’s get real, a company is the owners’ playground, no matter what they call it. That’s the privilege they purchase when those checks clear every other Friday.
Strip away the collective fiction and you might find out that you aren’t actually best buds, especially after offering them three to six months wages to walk away.
Would you quit for half a year’s cash?
I love my job and I love my employer. But I got options as a skilled professional in a good economy.
Would I take the deal? In my current place, I don’t think so. I’m too far from retirement and I enjoy my colleagues too much. But could I live with dragging myself to the office for the next half year, knowing it was pro bono? What if my favorite coworkers quit?
That’s where meaning kicks in. It’s one thing to grab a fat check. But what next? I still have to work. Where? At a place where I might not enjoy the company? It’s been a privilege to serve my fellow citizens. Do I have the patience to serve pushy private clients?
Of course, we’re not tech workers so it’s all hypothetical (I’m not winning the lottery either). But fantasy challenges our assumptions about daily life. It pushes us through a series of “why’s”. Why do we work? Why did we chose this specific employer, this profession? Why do we stay? Why are we still in this game?
~
Some Links
I’ve always been fond of electronica, starting with .mod files on the 16-bit Sound Blaster on our 386. I listened to Glitch Mob’s Drink the Sea on repeat while doing mad overtime in Houston and I’ve gone through a few other electronica phases in the past decade at Vegas.
Lately I’ve been working so hard that I can only listen to music with a strong beat. Last week, I finally stumbled across the term “Glitch Hop” on the title card to Defqwop’s Heart Afire.
Once I found a name, I dug into google. Here’s an hour long mix by Xefox, overview by last.fm, and a brief primer on Bandcamp. This music isn’t as highbrow as last week’s discovery of Ahmad Jamal, but it’s enough off the beaten path to be worth sharing.
With all the calls and emails I’ve fielded over the past two years, this week was the first time that someone looked at my online portfolio before contacting me. (LinkedIn recruiters are shockingly lazy!)
The opportunity wasn’t a good fit, but we had a great conversation, and I learned about an exciting position to share with younger architects.
~
My portfolio is a simple WordPress site with the Twenty Fourteen template and these plug-ins:
Disable Comments
Fourteen Colors (to change the colors in the template)
Really Simple SSL
SSL Insecure Content Fixer
WP Meta and Date Remover
If this looks like too much, remember the imperative is to have a portfolio. Use a free site builder. (The creative director that I met had their work on Behance.)
~
I’m a paranoid employment prepper. I graduated into the dotcom bust of 2001 and finished my masters in 2008. An online portfolio is an essential piece in my professional go-bag (along with a current resume, LinkedIn account, and preprinted work samples).
More than forestalling doom and gloom and compiling old work, building a portfolio signals where you want to go.
It forces you to write. Writing makes you think.
I built this iteration in 2020. Amidst the global chaos, it was salutary to appreciate my career and ponder the future. As always, the process is more than the final product.
Go make a portfolio! You’ll get more than a portfolio.
I’ve always thought I’d read some Chinese philosophy, someday.
That day came on a sunny afternoon my mind was blown as I was parking my car behind E-Jo, a Korean bone broth restaurant. The History of China podcast was talking about a Han dynasty emperor who used Daoism as his ruling ideology.
That blew my mind. I always thought Daoists were crazy drunks in a forest, not competing with Confucians in the halls of power.
Don’t get me wrong, the Tao Te Ching is great stuff for skipping out into the woods. But there is plenty of “leadership advice”. Timely stuff before landing a gig as a Project Manager representing the State.
~
True leaders are hardly known to their followers. . . . When the work’s done right, with no fuss or boasting, ordinary people say, Oh, we did it.
excerpt from Tao Te Ching 17
My project teams have been complimentary of my leadership. Of course, I’m the source of their next project, so it’s hard to know how much of it is sincere. Then again, I guess such compliments are better than the alternative. On my end, I believe that I have the easiest job on the team. I move some paper around and they do all the real work.
~
And so the wise soul predominates without dominating, and leads without misleading. And people don’t get tired of enjoying and praising one who, not competing, has in all the world no competitor.
excerpt from Tao Te Ching 66
A hidden benefit of joining the State is that any promotion includes a significant increase in stress for a marginal pay raise. There is no financial incentive to rise up the hierarchy. As such, I have no competition in my office. If someone else wants the headache, let them have it.
John Minford’s commentary for this section includes this short poem by Li Bo for his friend the Taoist Hermit Yuan Danqiu.
I envy you, my friend, Dwelling on East Mountain, Lover of beauteous hills and valleys, Asleep in the green season of spring Among empty forests, Rising long after daybreak, The wind in the pines Blowing through your sleeves, The stony brook washing your soul. I envy you, Lying there unperturbed, Pillowed high On your emerald mist.
~
How to make peace? Wise souls keep their part of the contract and don’t make demands on others. People whose power is real fulfill their obligations; people whose power is hollow insist on their claims.
excerpt from Tao Te Ching 79
In the heat of the moment, it’s easy to get annoyed at an underperforming contractor or consultant. Such tendencies get worse the longer I hold this comfortable position of power. I need to constantly remind myself that I don’t have to insist on my rights — I hold the fucking checkbook. Unfortunately, I’m sometimes forced to remind my partners of their obligations and my expectations of their performance, but there’s no excuse for losing my cool.
Whosoever lacks Inner Power will try to control Others by Force, will demand a due, exact a tithe, and Bitterness will ensue. The Tao of Softness and gentleness wards off Bitterness. Hardness and Strength, Vanity and Pride create Bitterness and Resentment
John Minford’s translation of Magister Liu’s commentary
When I joined the State, we processed physical paperwork.
Vendor mails Invoice to Accounting in Carson City
Accounting interdepartmental mails invoice to Public Works
Public Works admin mails invoice down to Las Vegas
Project Manager mails signed invoice up to Public Works in Carson City
Deputy Administrator mails signed invoice across the street to Accounting
Accounting mails check to Vendor.
Paper shuffled across our state 6 (SIX!) times to pay a simple invoice.
Fortunately, a Management Analyst joined the State the same day that I started. One of his goals was to implement digital signatures.
I eagerly volunteered.
Ten months later, we finally contracted with a vendor. It took another half year of brainstorming and pushing management before we were approved to process invoices on Adobe Sign.
The vendor emails their invoice to the PM. It takes five minutes to send it out for approvals and payment.
A couple months later, COVID happened.
We were fortunate to have gotten past the fear of digital approvals before the pandemic hit. The calamity actually accelerated the adoption of digital signatures for rest of our documents.
I also discovered that Adobe Sign can automate much of the process — a godsend for complicated agreements which consistently go to the same individuals.
Being an evangelist for of this initiative has been my most tangible accomplishment within the State.
Sometimes it’s just lucky to be new at the right time!
Hopefully I’ll discover other awesome process improvements to share over my next two decades!
~
On net, this digital process is an absolute winner for the State and our partners. However, I must note that has resulted in a perverse dynamic where a PM spends more time processing paperwork than in the past. The cloud stole tasks from administrative assistants and put it on licensed engineers and architects.
The next step would be free up the licensed professionals to return their focus on their professional expertise. Cal Newport discusses this issue in his book “A World Without Email”, but the path forward is still murky.
~
PS: You can “add” email addresses in Google with a “+” (plus sign). If your gmail is “sample@gmail.com” then you can create a limitless sub-email addresses like “sample+vendor@gmail.com” and “sample+chief@gmail.com”… All those emails will just land in your main gmail inbox. It’s an invaluable hack to testing all sorts of digital systems.
A few years ago, I was roped into assisting with the state’s transition to a new Enterprise Resource Platform (ERP), updating our ancient web-software backbone to link all our HR and financial information.
Anyone who has helped implement an ERP can attest, it’s a complicated effort — enough that this initiative has been put on hold for a year.
I’m an architect, not an accountant. But as a project manager, I’m now accountant-adjacent. A big part of my job is preparing and moving documents around. As the division’s representative, my goal was to make sure that they didn’t set up the system in a way that make our lives as Project Manager 2’s harder after implementation.
It was an enlightening experience. I’ve always been the Architect-Consultant who is hired to fix a problem. Things shifted a little when I joined the state and became the Owner.
This was the first time that I was just a User.
It’s hard! These consultants swoop in with minimal knowledge of how I do my job. They shove my needs into a their workflow for their brand new, opaque system. They don’t know what I do, and I barely know what they do. In this case, I was doubly ignorant — of both software and accountant-speak. Amidst the confusion, I was keenly aware of the high stakes because we were gonna be stuck with this program for the rest of my career.
I’d like to think I was a reasonably humble architect, but being a User is humbling at a whole other level! I was powerless, just praying that the experts listened to my pleas and followed through on their promises. I appreciate that a new software platform presents opportunities for positive change, but it felt like they were following their own standard playbook without addressing our specific concerns. It didn’t help that as a project manager, I was extra-sensitive to how they were mismanaging the process. It was so frustrating that I lost my temper a few times, once in a large meeting!
Aside from that shameful embarrassment, this effort gave me a chance to build great relationships with our accountants (nothing builds comradery as an uncaring outside force).
And in a moment of inspiration I threw together this diagram showing how the new system will allow to analyze our project finances along multiple dimensions.
I’m inordinately fond of this diagram, maybe because it melds my current work with my old life. I doubt a non-architect would have realized that an axonometric drawing could sell the potential of the new ERP!
Alt Text: Axonometric diagram of the ERP tracking project funds on multiple dimensions. The different funding sources are shown as different layers on the vertical axis, with cost categories on the X axis and project phasing on Y axis of each spreadsheet. I suspect my early experience as a hand draftsman is why I love axon’s.
