Podcast Episode Two - Interview with an Artist

In this podcast episode of "What can a project manager learn from X?", I explore what a project manager can learn from an artist.  I interviewed Harry Sidebotham, an artist who lives in Chicago, and we touched on how he goes from having an idea to a finished painting, the process involved in doing so, how he prices his work, and his advice for how to deal with other people's opinions.

Harry's paintings are amazing.  You can check out a bunch of his work on his website at http://harrysidebotham.blogspot.com.

As always, you can subscribe to this podcast in iTunes or in any RSS reader.  For those of you inclined to listen right from this site, you can simply click on the audio player below.

I sincerely hope you enjoy the show and would love to hear your thoughts.

Don't talk through the mouth of someone else

One thing I've learned the hard way is that it's very difficult to communicate to one person through another. This should be obvious right? We all played the telephone game when we were kids.

In a lot of businesses though, even when there are "open door policies", there's still sort of an unspoken (or spoken) chain of command. The problem this causes is that the message you want to deliver simply cannot be sent by someone else in the same way that you would deliver it. Tone will be different. Body language will be different. A sense of empathy or compassion may be absent. The list goes on and on.

This is why when an idea spreads through the internet it's so effective. Obviously, there's the critical piece about information traveling quickly. Just as important though is that people are brought directly to the source. If someone likes a blog post of mine, they may add a quick comment and then link to it. The new reader is hearing directly from me without a filter - which is exactly what I want.

Can you imagine what would happen if every time someone liked something on the internet they first interpreted it, then re-wrote it, and then passed it along. That would obviously be ridiculous.

Yet this is exactly what's going on in a typical organization every day.

The CEO's get their information from the VP's, who get their information from a Director, who in turn gets information from a manager. The employee who has a great idea but decides to follow the chain of command is going to have their message altered significantly.

If there's a message you want to get to someone, you need to understand that you are disrespecting that message if you put the delivery of it entirely into the hands of another person. If you need to respect your organization and it's culture that's fine, but you need to find a way for people to hear the message directly from you.

Likewise, if you're running an organization, ask yourself whether you're hearing directly from most of your people or whether most of it's being filtered. If it's the latter, are you sure the right things are being filtered out? Is there a lot of good stuff being thrown out with the bad?

Whether you're the sender or receiver, just remember that it's very difficult to talk through the mouth of another. And when it happens, the message gets altered.

iTunes Podcast Link

Project Idealism - the podcast, is now available in the iTunes store. You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes with this link, and it will download only the podcast portions of this blog. You can of course subscribe to this blog and it will contain the both the text posts and a way to play the podcasts.

I hope you enjoy the new show!

Podcast Episode One - An Introduction

I'm pretty excited to announce today that I have started a podcast. All episodes will be added right to this blog so you shouldn't need to modify any of your settings to hear the individual episodes. You'll also be able to subscribe to the Podcast in iTunes in a couple days after it's been approved by the folks over at Apple. The concept behind this show is "What can a project manager learn from X?"

"X" can be anything from a chef, to a professor, to a firefighter. The idea is that project managers and other professionals can learn a lot from these amazing individuals, the things they are creating, and the problems they are solving. Not normally considered "projects", they can teach us a lot about the projects we are managing and the businesses we are running.

In addition to listening to the show in iTunes or an RSS reader, I'll embed the file right here as well so you can listen to it right from one of my posts.

Birds and Monkeys

I want you to imagine for a moment a monkey swinging from limb to limb darting through a forest. It's movements are smooth and fluid as it swings from one branch to another, propelling itself through the wilderness to it's final destination.

Up above is a bird that's soaring effortlessly, gliding with the wind in a near straight line. It too is navigating her way towards a final destination.

Now imagine the bird trying to tell the Monkey that it shouldn't be swinging back and forth, moving left and right, and wasting all that energy. Clearly it should be moving in a perfectly straight line! In fact, it should learn to fly! After all, from the bird's perspective, that is obviously the best way to get around.

In the world of business, people are always asking monkeys to act like birds and asking birds to act like monkeys. It's extremely important to understand that what works well for someone else may work terribly for you.

Maybe you have a different style. Maybe your personality allows you to be more abrasive than others. Maybe your personality requires you to be less abrasive. Maybe you're more soft-spoken, or an introvert, or a raging extrovert, or whatever.

In order to know what will work for you, you need to know yourself. Take advice from people, learn from them, understand the larger narrative and put that advice to good work.

But when people start offering you advice on specific tactics - on how best to do the specific tasks of your job - be conscientious as to whether it will work for you. If it will, then that's awesome.

First though, make sure it isn't a bird trying to teach a monkey to fly.