Welcome from Patrick Gray:
Dear carefully selected friends and colleagues (mainly those I know will not forever hate me for intruding into your inbox):
Welcome to the Foresight Newsletter, a free monthly publication of my consulting company: Prevoyance Group. This newsletter shares tips and observations from my consulting career that I hope will prove informative or at least amusing.
I have taken the liberty of adding all of you to the subscription list, however like many a late night infomercial, you can cancel at anytime using the link at the bottom of the email.
I hope you enjoy Foresight!
Best Regards,
Patrick Gray
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Foresight is a monthly newsletter published by the Prevoyance Group, and contains four sections:
Project: 3 Strikes and You're Out!
Life
Heard in the Hallway: Hyphenation-tage
Travels with Patrick: Death in the Afternoon
Project
3 Strikes and You're Out!
One of the great decisions facing may project managers and project sponsors is when to move a go-live date. This is a gut-wrenching decision, impacting cost, resource allocation and ROI. Such a decision also upsets many peoples' lives, throwing a project into complete disarray and simultaneously ramping up the rumor mill to full capacity. A frequent question is: How many date moves can a project get away with and still be successful?
It seems almost expected that most large projects will not make their initial implementation date, and that a missed initial date is par for the course. A second missed date is slightly more insidious, and the point where blame usually starts being allocated, and management shakeups ensue. This is also the make or break date for the project, especially if the project at hand is an initial rollout of a new process or system. A second date move, if used correctly can unite the project team behind the cause, and if reasonable goals and expectations are set, can reinvigorate a flagging team towards a more realistic deadline. Most teams will strongly desire to avoid a third failure, and a second missed date usually serves as a wakeup call throughout the organization that the project must be paid proper heed and given proper resources.
The third go-live date must be set with care, as the "third strike" in this case is the most deadly. The third time a go-live date is missed, blame is almost always allocated upwards by the rank and file of the project team, regardless of fault. Project leadership and business sponsors are blamed for their inability to manage the project, and the end users become viewed as the enemy rather than an ally. With their confidence completely eroded, the team will likely expect future date slippage and interpret every management dictum as subject to change. A formerly high performing team will adopt a blasé attitude, and approach future tasks with nothing but skepticism.
How do you avoid this fate? To continue with the baseball analogy, you must hit a home run before the third missed date. If your project misses two deadlines, one of the key project levers (scope, timeline and budget) is out of line. The scope may be too aggressive for the timeline, or perhaps funding or resources are not contributing as expected. After determining the causes of failure reduce project scope to cover "low hanging fruit" and ensure the new date allows comfortable margin for error. A smashing success, even with a reduced scope will reinvigorate your team and rebuild lost credibility for the project.
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Life
When you are particularly stressed at work, take a 5 minute walk. Either get some fresh air, or simply stretch your legs by walking to a more distant printer/bathroom/water cooler. It's amazing what 5 minutes of physical activity can do for your state of mind.
I often hear complaints that there is never enough time to read a good book, yet many of us spend several hours each week stuck in a car or on an airplane. Audio books can be cheaply purchased secondhand on eBay or Amazon.com, and allow you to fill "dead time" with something both relaxing and productive. You can generally resell the CDs or tapes when done with them for a near-complete return of your initial outlay, or "donate" them to another suffering commuter.
If you travel frequently, pick a single airline and hotel chain that serves most of the areas your travel and vacation in, and sign up for their frequent traveler programs and credit card(s). It may occasionally require an extra 5 minutes in the car to get to a hotel in your chain, but use of a single vendor means increased perks, and quicker access to free vacations.
If you don't mind reading on your computer screen, subscribe to one of the major newspapers' online edition, such as WSJ.com. Most websites offer the same content as the print edition, without requiring you to carry a printed newspaper around. You'll be much more conversant on current events, and far more knowledgeable than someone who gets the 15 second "news bites" used on TV and radio.
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Heard in the Hallway: Hyphenation-atage
I'm consistently amazed at the strange words I hear or read supposedly educated people make up in a business setting, and actually utter without creating so much as a look of indignation by the unwitting recipient. A recent favorite is "weight-age," as in "we should compare the weight-age of these two options, and decide an appropriate course of action." It seems many think any word that fails the "spell checker test" can be made acceptable by the addition of a hyphen. Perhaps we should call this hyphenation-atage, although I still prefer the weight-age carried by correct English!
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Travels with Patrick: Death in the Afternoon
When traveling I always make an effort to use the local language, usually ineffectively. On a past trip to France, I thought my several years of high school French would finally pay off while dining with my then-girlfriend (now wife) and some of her friends. After successfully managing to order some food and drink for myself, and emboldened with a few glasses of wine, I continued to push the limits of my language skills. The waiter returned at the end of the meal and asked if everyone was done. Everyone at the table, far more advanced French linguists than I, answered to the waiter's satisfaction. When our server looked my way, I confidently answered: "Je suis fini" and in return received a confused and horrified look. Literally translated this means "I am finished," but in this case, "finished" is interpreted in the physical sense, and the phrase I ever-so-eloquently used means "I am dead."
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