WTF?! No-BS PM -- Competence Building via Education

No doubt many of us read The Tortoise and the Hare when we were kids. Lately there has been a new version of this classic fable circulating on the Internet. Here is how it goes:

Once upon a time a tortoise and a hare had an argument about who was faster. They decided to settle the argument with a race. They agreed on a route and started the race. The hare shot ahead and ran briskly for some time.

Then, seeing that he was far ahead of the tortoise, the hare decided he could sit under a tree for a while and relax be fore continuing the race. Soon he fell asleep. The tortoise, plodding on, overtook him and finished the race, emerging as the undisputed champion. The hare woke up and realized that he'd lost the race.

The moral of the story is that even if you are better to day; it does not guarantee your future success. You cannot idle, or else your competitors will catch up and overtake you.

There are two kinds of companies, those that are getting better and those that are dying. If you're standing still, you're dying; you just don't know it yet.

Fortunately, one failure does not usually mean the end of the line (although there are clear exceptions). Most of the time, the race will continue. This is the added modern twist to the old story.

The hare was disappointed at losing the race and he did some soul-searching. He realized that he'd lost the race only because he had been overconfident, careless, and slack. If he had not taken things for granted there's no way the tortoise could have beaten him. So he challenged the tortoise to an other race. The tortoise agreed. This time, the hare went all out and ran without stopping, from start to finish, and he won by several miles.

What is the moral of the story? When you lose a battle, it’s not the end of the war. You need to know why you failed, and determine your core competence and how to use it to your advantage.

But the story doesn't end here either.

The tortoise did some thinking this time, and realized that there's no way he could beat the hare in this race. He thought for a while, and then challenged the hare to another race, but on a different route. The hare agreed. In keeping with his self-made commitment to be consistently fast, the hare took off and ran at top speed until he came to a broad river. The finish line was a couple of kilometers on the other side of the river.

The hare sat there wondering what to do. In the mean time the tortoise trundled along, got into the river, swam to the opposite bank, continued walking and finished the race.

Now what is the moral of the story? First: identify your core competency and then change the playing field to suit it. In a competitive market, you must use your competence to your advantage to build the core products that will give your customers desired value and service.

But wait-the story is not yet ended! By this time the hare and the tortoise had become pretty good friends and they did some thinking together. Both realized that their last race could have been run much faster. So they decided to race again, as a team-against time. Their goal was to beat their respective best times. They started off with the hare carrying the tortoise to the riverbank. There, the tortoise took over and swam across with the hare on his back. On the opposite bank, the hare again carried the tortoise and they reached the finish line together. This time both of them are winners. They beat their own best times when they worked together as a team. Both felt a greater sense of satisfaction than they had felt earlier.

The moral of the story now? It's good to be individually brilliant and to have strong competencies; but unless you are able to work as a team harnessing each other's core competencies, you will always per form below par because there will be situations in which you will do poorly and someone else will do well. Teamwork is mainly about utilizing the right competence at the right time and at the right place. When the team has a common goal, its strength is equal to the sum of its competencies. It’s always more powerful than any single individual.

There are more lessons to be learned from this story.

Note that neither the hare nor the tortoise gave up after failures. The hare decided to work harder and put in more effort after his failure. The tortoise changed his strategy be cause he was already working as hard as he could. In life, when faced with failure, sometimes it’s appropriate to work harder and put in more effort. Sometimes it’s appropriate to change strategy and try something different. And sometimes it’s appropriate to do both.

The hare and the tortoise also learned another valuable lesson. When they quit competing against each other and started cooperating, they achieved far better results. Just as we discussed earlier, if manufacturing and development will work as a team, they can achieve much faster time-to-market and volume-to-market, which makes every one in the company a winner. The point is that both hare and tortoise learned from their mistakes and found new ways to counter their problems.

Core competencies are the collective learning in the organization, especially how to coordinate diverse production skills and integrate multiple streams of technologies....The real sources of advantage are to be found in management's ability to consolidate the competencies that empower individual businesses to adapt quickly to changing opportunities.

THE PROJECT AS THE PLAYING FIELD FOR COMPETENCE DEVELOPMENT

One of the most important factors in a project's success is the competency of team members. Any project manager will tell you that he or she will require a very competent team to solve those unexpected project problems! The project man ager has no time to train people-they are expected to know their jobs. A project should not be a training ground for its members.

Yet, for many, project participation is in fact the best training ground. While all projects need capable members, a project is also a great opportunity to develop competencies.

It's called learning by doing. It takes place during project implementation, as well as at the end of the project.

How can we develop competencies while executing a project? Core competencies are the collective learning in the organization, meaning that the best place for team learning is during project execution. The team learns what is right and what is missing, and they enhance their capability-thus increasing their competencies as a whole. Think of this as a plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle. When the project team launches (plan), they encounter new problems (do). They find a solution (check).

They internalize it and gain a new capability (act), and this improvement cycle continues.

The critical issue is how to share this knowledge beyond the project boundary. Many companies are unsuccessful in sharing lessons learned from mistakes. Only problem solving can enhance team competencies. It’s vital that this lesson permeates the entire organization, that those who are the

"right" people to know this lesson learn it. Organizational learning means preventing problems, not just by one person but by the whole organization.

"Organizations learn only through individuals who learn. Individual learning does not guarantee organizational learning. But without it no organizational learning occurs". Because team learning occurs basically through members who learn from their problems and mistakes, it’s essential to document these processes and formally share them with others. And the best way to internalize a new skill is by teaching it and interacting with learners. Ongoing presentations on project problems and solutions will enhance the company's overall competencies.

Remember, no project is ever a complete failure. It can always be used as a bad example!