Management nugget number 9: Total time is not the same as work time

Nugget 9: Total time is not the same as work time.

Explanation:

it’s a well-known internet meme that managers will send an email in the middle of the night, then complain that their staff have not acted upon it by 7 a.m., That is time abuse on a basic scale. As a manager dealing with serious projects, you have to deal with this in a larger scale and ensure that you do not inflict it on your teams.

To explain this more, it’s best to realise that such time misuse can be compounded, it happens in multiple ways and in multiple situations, let’s look at some examples:

  • You assume that everybody is going to work 12 or 14 or 16 hours a day to hit a deliverable.
  • You assume weekends and holidays will be cancelled.
  • You assume that the thing that you need doing is the most important thing ever, and even if that is true, you assume that nothing bad or unavoidable can happen to people.
  • You assume that other work functions and other high priority items will not come up.
  • You don’t realise that some items cannot be run in parallel or that some cannot be done at certain times of day and you might have to wait.

All of these add up and stack one on another and you end up thinking, “oh we’ve got a week to do that, that’s tons of hours, that’s 100 hours”, not realising that it really is only 37 that you can rely on, and even then you might be wrong,

Now I know this sounds like just ordinary project planning, but it tends to show up the worst during crisis situations, the worst time period I find is problems that need solving between 1 and 2 weeks, and as the time for delivery gets closer, you will find you become more unreasonable, you end up counting the actual hours left to the deliverable rather than counting the usable hours.

So to summarise, even if it’s a disaster, even if it’s a crisis, even if according to your senior client it is the most important thing in the world, the world will not stop, every hour is not available for you to use, plan accordingly, be honest with yourself and don’t ruin your teams life. 

Disclaimer: As always these posts are not aimed at anyone client or employer and are just my personal observations over a lifetime of dealing with both management and frontline associates.

 

Management nugget number 8: If you are aiming for delivery then sometimes planning to take the blame is a valid project strategy

Nugget 8:  If you are aiming for delivery then sometimes planning to take the blame is a valid project strategy.

Explanation:

OK this is another one where you will have to bare with me to the end. There are some organisations where fear of getting blamed for ANYTHING is overwhelming. This might be about only a single document or the ultimate delivery of the project, but whatever the level, a huge amount of effort will be put into avoiding actually getting something done, because only people who do things can do them wrong.

Such organisations might be Government departments where it is a job for life and the risk of loosing it might be too great, or merely one where things have stayed the same for a long time and any change is likely to be blamed for any bad thing that might happen, but nevertheless these places exist and as someone who is supposed to deliver change and improvement you have to combat it.

Working at multiple corporations and government departments I have found the easiest way of doing this is to take the blame yourself!!,  now you don’t have to do anything actually wrong to take the blame, you really just have to give the opportunity for somebody to blame you for something and then not defend yourself.

My personal favourite way of doing this is when there is a technical documentation delivery needed to get the project rolling, so you do it yourself for a first draught without the help of specialists within the business, this will most likely mean you will get things wrong.

That will give people the opportunity to go for you, the same people who are frozen into immobility will blast you, say everything is wrong and everything is your fault,  BUT it’s not actually a big deal because it’s a small thing at a beginning of the project, and now you have the project moving and you’ve got one more step closer to a deliverable, also these people feel empowered, they stand a better chance of running with the project and doing more, and all you had to do is have some thick skin and take some flak.

Now I know this sounds manipulative and cheap, and that’s because it is!!, but unlike so many other manipulative tactics, no one but you gets hurts and if you use it to get your project delivered successfully, then that is damage I think a grown manager can take.

Disclaimer: As always these posts are not aimed at anyone client or employer and are just my personal observations over a lifetime of dealing with both management and frontline associates.

 

Management nugget number 7: Agile is a useful methodology, don’t let it fall into the wrong hands.

Nugget 7: Agile is a useful methodology, don’t let it fall into the wrong hands.

Explanation:

The Agile project methodology is one of the best ways for actually getting things done, but like all solutions it is open to abuse, don’t let your managers and project managers twist it to be something it is not, or abuse it to make it fit with their own way of working.

Classic examples I have seen of abusing Agile are:

“Agile reporting”:  Which is just an excuse to get a daily status report while not actually delivering any help or assistance to your team.

“We work in an Agile Way”: Which is often a way of avoiding standards, structure or any kind of safety measures (or responsibilities).

You don’t have to follow Agile to the n-th degree, as that ruins the core principle and just replaces one form of paperwork with another, but try and stick to the basics.

Disclaimer: As always these posts are not aimed at anyone client or employer and are just my personal observations over a lifetime of dealing with both management and frontline associates.

 

Mobile Painting Pt 4: The Case

The final big part of sorting out a mobile painting solution is the case, this turns out to be the trickiest part of them all, I have seen a number of different solutions and none of them seemed to meet all of the requirements I had, straight from the shop, after a lot of deliberation I went for The Paint Chest by Frontier War Gaming

I wanted to be able to carry absolutely everything I need for a single paint trip in a single box, which when I laid everything out meant I could not go for the smaller but awesome looking “The Paint Case”, I know some people can do minimalist painting solution but I want this to be my main painting box, also I tend to carry group equipment.

Looks good sitting on a desk

The case itself is built nice and strongly. There is a bit of wobble in how it is put together on the doors, but after having a look it the quality hinges I realised it’s impossible to do anything about that, given distance from fulcrum and that kind of thing.

The wood is a good solid one that doesn’t show any weakness.

The hinges are solid metal, metal clasps, good solid construction all round.

The box itself feels like it is laser cut. The drawer fittings when you first start using them feel a little bit rough. But that is only the nature of its construction, once you get the hang of them, they all fit perfectly and don’t rattle.

There are notable slight differences in height between the different spaces for draws, with the top draw on each vertical column actually having a bit more space, I save those four areas for when I need a little bit more height (say for contrast paints).

The wet palette itself is a strange mix. The actual palette itself is excellent. One of the few with an airtight seal. couldn’t recommend it more, so it was a bit strange that they went a bit low quality after that, the foam feels low density and cheap. In fact, I went and swapped out the foam with an existing piece I had from another brand. The same is true for the actual paper. As you can see from the pictures. It’s a good deal more transparent. It’s totally serviceable though, I am at the stage of painting where I am not the best painter in the world. So it doesn’t make that much of a difference to me. But on hot days, it wants to curl up far faster than the competition.

There is additional varieties of drawers that you can buy including a good solid metal plate version. That’s pretty useful for miniatures and stuff with magnets. I swapped out a couple of drawers for those and also altered my handles to have magnets in them to make use of this

The actual box versions of the draws do come with dividers but I’ve ended up not using those. The boxes themselves aren’t really so big that you need to do dividers but it’s nice that they are supplied.

When I take the box to Bad Moon Café of all of the items that I take, the case itself is the one that is asked about the most, so it seems there are not many good competitors out there, There are a lot of home brew versions and everyone’s got their opinion but this does seem to be the very best case out in the market.

 

Management nugget number 6: Personal priorities & “Resource bombing”

Nugget 6: Personal priorities often cause managers to “Resource bomb” each other, there is nothing actually aggressive or deliberately malicious in this.

Explanation:

It often seems as if some managers are attempting to hog all the resource in a project, and you often see what I call “Resource bombing”, which is when one manager uses their position or the fact that their project is flavour of the month, to rob another project of resource to try and get their deliverables over the line.

For the most part there is nothing deliberate or malicious in this, they are not trying to hurt the other project they are just trying to deliver and feel they don’t have the resources to meet management expectations.

Often confronting them directly and explaining the harm that they are doing to your project will get them to either back off or enable you to manage it between the two of you, then you can both deliver with the limited resources you have. At worst formally talking to them about it shows you are trying to work as a team player,  and give a paper trail that allows you to justify part of your non delivery because you have had resources taken off you, 

This is a situation where you need to solidly try and fix it not just for your own delivery, but for your team so they are not painted as people that can’t deliver.

Disclaimer: As always these posts are not aimed at anyone client or employer and are just my personal observations over a lifetime of dealing with both management and frontline associates.