Yup, I completely blew it. And I ‘teach this stuff’. I knew better. But it ended with a big ol’ slice of humble pie.
Let me set the stage…
I was partnering with another firm to provide some strategic talent management consulting to some their clients. I’ve done similar work for years and it is often accompanied by managing the project with the client to configure their software system to include the management principles we agree they should implement. Now, understand, I’m not a detailed project manager. I respect the people who are, however, I’m not one of them. But I’ve done this follow-on work for years. It’s very part-time and it usually provides me more time to work with the team to make the new principles ‘real’ in their environment.
But this time I was asked, as a favor, to cover a couple implementation projects (because the vendor lost a key resource) while we waited for the other more strategic engagements to get signed and kicked-off. And I said, ‘ah…sure’.
So what did I do?
Since I’d done this for years, I approached this work just like the software configurations I had led after the strategic portions of past projects. I tend to use a rather relaxed, casual, (hopefully providing a sense of calm, and letting the team know ‘done this a bunch, we’ll be fine’) often humorous style. This is really an extension of the style I use in the consulting phase, where my goal is to creatively challenge and expand their thinking and beliefs. And if I can get them laughing I can keep them from digging in their heels against new ideas.
I also prefer to focus on the ‘big rocks’, the major issues, and let the smaller items play themselves out naturally throughout the project.
So how’d it go?
Terribly! Crash and burn…melt into the earth…then explode into a huge fireball! In other words, not well at all.
These clients felt that I wasn’t on top of all the details, and they interpreted my ‘relaxed’ style to mean that I wasn’t committed to the success of their project. They then started to doubt what I was doing and were on the lookout for any mistake or typo I might make.
Not exactly the description of a successful trusting relationship.
What did I do wrong?
Gee, let me count the mistakes.
I didn’t give the work my best effort. While this rarely is a challenge for me, I had too many things going on and…from here I could pile on the excuses. But that’s all they would be, excuses. I accepted the work and should have given it my best.
I didn’t work to earn the trust and respect of the new clients. I assumed that when they heard I had done over 30 similar projects that they would ‘grant me’ the trust to help them be successful. (By the way, the projects progressed just fine. It was only me that didn’t.) In not working to earn their respect, I violated one of the primary insights of “The 5 Levels of Leadership” (yes, the leadership model I teach…). It tells us that when you move between organizations you rarely stay at the same ‘level’ of influence. I needed to work to earn their trust, not just assume I would get it.
I didn’t think about how my style would differ from what they had already experienced with the person I was replacing. I ‘knew’ my style would work, because it had worked so well in the past. I forgot to think about what the client would experience in the transition to me. It turned out that the person I was replacing was very detailed in their approach (me, not so much) and the client had gotten very comfortable with that approach. So when I came in and tried to focus primarily on the big concerns, I lost credibility because I didn’t know ‘the exact date, 5 weeks in the future, they needed to sign-off on design.’ I should have asked more questions, explained how I’ve done this work in the past, and get their approval on how we would proceed.
I assumed my style would work with them as well as it had in the past. This is closely related to #3, but this principle is true whether I’m coming in at the beginning or coming in behind someone else. I usually talk through this in my first meeting with a client. I let them know that, “While I take our work together very seriously, if it’s okay with you, I also like to make our time together fun. (We don’t have to be uptight to be professional.) So we’ll have as much fun in this work as you want, while we make great things happen. How does that sound?” So this puts it in their hands. They will set the tone. By the way, I know having fun along the way makes a number of other things go much more smoothly. But I have to let them dictate that. In this case I didn’t provide any description of my approach, nor did I get their buy-in to it.
I wasn’t playing to my strengths. (Ouch, I probably teach that one the most!) I let myself get ‘talked into’ doing this favor for a vendor partner. Marcus Buckingham busted the myth: “A good team member does whatever it takes to help the team.” He replaced that phrase with “A good team member volunteers their strengths to the team most of the time.” Not only was I not playing to my strengths, I was actually playing to a weakness (or two…or three). So not only was I not performing as well as I could have, it was actually taking much more of my time and energy to get the work done. All of these points are why we should play to our strengths whenever we can to benefit both ourselves and the team.
The objectives of the work didn’t match ‘who I am’. I’m a grower/developer of people. That’s what I do and who I am. The reason I did this work in the past was to have more time working with the team members and helping them develop their understanding, knowledge and abilities in this key area of success. (On this engagement there was none of that.) Just getting the project done “on time and on budget”, isn’t what’s important to me. (For those of you that believe it is, I ask you, what was the exact date you launched your company’s current performance management system?) So the expectation of the role, didn’t match who I am. Making sure that I am motivated by the clients’ expectation of the work is a key success principle that I forgot.
So there you have it. Along with having to admit that even a guy who ‘teaches this stuff’, blows it from time to time, I hope this gives you an example from which you can learn from my mistakes. Hopefully, you won’t have to experience something like this yourself.
Question: Are there times you haven’t put into practice what you know that you know? Why do you think it happened?
