10 years of lessons learned

Today is my last working day for this big software company. I gather the lessons I learned in being a Project Manager (PM) and Change Manager / Product Manager. Here they are, in no particular order, yet stripped from any trade secrets of course.

1. Beat the competition: Prepare

One can prepare a lot more than the average guy considers to prepare for. Our trick was to win the day by being super-duper-prepared. We would run our presentations with a test audience - multiple times if needed, proof-read each other’s (important) emails, and generally consider first-time-right a rare event, a cause for celebration. The company culture even has a dirty word to describe violating due diligence: “winging it”.

2. A rich demo persona

To teach users about our planning software, we entertained a fictive paper products manufacturing company - in need of planning. The back story got ever more rich: this fictitious company featured a named CEO persona, in an ever cranky mood. They produce imaginary widgets with a defined set of named machines to cut, color, and fold. Not only did this make for gripping e-learner content, it provided a ready context for bug reproduction submissions to R&D. It was also the implicit context to explain a new feature of the software. Every employee knows the story, speaks the same language and needs only a few words to designate their point. Lesson: If you sell a software product, standardize a lively persona for it, throughout your entire organization, and nurture it.

3. Partnership means to challenge your customer

Partnership is a buzzword, often abused as a sassy marketing term, but not at us. We always considered our customers our equal, mutual Partner. Partners trust each other enough to confront adversity, to call out bad behaviour, to reject the status quo and then to commit to replace it with something better. As a project manager I have flat-out rejected pointless customer requests to send consultants on-site, rejected attempts to be pressured into unrealistic schedules, and boldly demanded high quality input from the customer. Projects and joint results thrived from such Partnership. The downside is that we were generally known in the industry to be opinionated, arrogant even. But arrogance evaporates when you deliver to your commitment, which we always did.

4. Get compensated for customer mistakes

The small IT consultancy shop I came from would always be talked down when facing customers behaving badly. Whenever the customer was late, indecisive, or supplying low quality input, we would just suck it up, suffer a shrunk margin. We just didn’t know other options. I learned to commit to deliver on time, and to let the partner (customer) commit to deliver on time, and on quality: reciprocate! When they failed to, in fairness and transparency, we would negotiate compensation for our damages. When they wanted something extra, we would calculate and propose an extension. This is normal for the Accentures out there, but we weren’t all that big. You need not be big-tech to practice assertiveness. It all falls apart if you let yourself slide, you need to be extremely strict on yourself. You cannot have shades of grey between your own performance black or white.

5. Sell value, not cost

The price tag on consultancy generally is an hourly rate, but the price tag on a software product can differ a lot depending on your perspective. The cost of huge software is huge. Customers like buying valuable software, they hate to buy expensive software. Beyond MS Office and other boxed stuff, I had never considered that some software products have no set price tag. Their tag says “talk to the sales advisor”. If your product costs more than your competitor’s, it is expensive. If your product convincingly saves the customer millions, it is valuable. Without a list price, you make a price per deal, tailored to this specific customer’s value of having it.

6. The best Marketing tactic is to proudly care for others

The word Marketing had a funny vibe to it. I associated it with advertising, loudness, being pushy. I learned marketing can be subtle and refined. Good Marketing is to be positively noticed by individuals who know someone who would buy from you. Marketing in practice is making sure they find their way to you. It is listening to their needs, and helping them in little ways wherever you can. No ostentatious gift-giving, no lavish treats, no outrageous promises. Flying abroad to show up and attend the customer’s company jubilee party, or lending a hand when they are in crisis, that is what real people love. I was struck with how our Marketing team considered every potential customer engagement similar to how a job-candidate looks at a potential employer. Outside Marketing, all everyone ever did for the Brand was to display pride, genuine interest, and craftsmanship. Anyone can, but few companies consciously commit to. A Sales leader I admire dictated the motto “always be giving value, on every interaction”. So the person who opens your email, takes your phone call, attends your event, should FEEL they gained something from it. Be it knowledge, entertainment, a solution, pride. The more value the merrier. It means that before you - Marketeer - disturb someone at work by phone or email, you make sure you have something of value to give.

7. If there is no pre-existing vision, be the one to lay it out there.

That is appreciated. So many things in a business desperately need someone’s care. Kids in school are trained to solve problems assigned to them. Visionary work is never assigned, it’s awarded to those who are first to point out the need for it. The path of a company - any company - can be influenced by employees without power decidedly, and quickly. Show the way, and you will gain followers, believers, and attention.

8. Forced daily reports, or twice-daily, is where control freaks suffocate a team beyond any hope of progress.

When in crisis be careful not to show your lack of trust by demanding “updates” instead of getting your hands dirty.

9. Everyone accepts you ADD a feature. REMOVING a feature is where it gets interesting.

If you just keep adding decorations you end up with an ugly Christmas tree. Design your software product with deletion and breakage in mind. Great modesty is needed to admit your “new cool feature” will inevitably have a finite life span, in the context of organizational change and market change. Actually, a new feature is more likely to be short-lived than to be long-lived. Refactoring is to engage in discussions to kill your babies, a sensation of hurt, of loss, of mourning. Yet, software products need to remain lean systems. When you stop refactoring your software product, it will turn into a monstrosity that bites the hand that feeds it.

10. Fixed price is what customers like best.

Give it to them, if at all feasible. It proves your craftsmanship, and your commitment.

11. Any remote crisis is helped with a human visit.

Regardless whether the visitor is an expert. Sometimes you get away with a phone call, but only sending an email will sink the ship further. This is why you see national leaders making their way to ground zero, the perilous middle of the tragedy. Show your team cares. Sure, it’s a scary visit to undertake, but it’s worth it. The manager who taught me this lesson on several occasions, would say “you need to be there.” She was always right.

12. Financial and political issues threaten a software project, don’t sweat technical ones.

Technical folks fear technical issues more than others, and among techies the risk list is usually full of technicalities. Yet, because technical challenges are what the team knows best, they are always inflated. Political issues can really derail a project, and no one should fool themselves into thinking that a project can be a success if you won’t be paid.

13. A ‘change’ is major if it’s major change for ANY of the stakeholders.

Naive people deem a process/software change major if they themselves experience it so. Technical folks think change in general is a matter of swaying the majority of (known) stakeholders. Well, any change to an organization or a software product supporting it, is Major until the opposite has been proven in its adoption. Change is hard and slow. You cannot bring about change in a group, you can only ignite change by winning over single individuals. To change the behavior of a group of 100 people, plan for yourself to have to win them over one by one, all 100 of them. Speaking to a group of 100 on stage, seeing some people nod in consent, means you won over the people who nodded, nothing more. If you are a gutsy character, test this: Ask your audience to stand up and say AYE to commmit to follow your new way and never to revert to their old way. But be prepared to have your ego shattered.

14. It is hard to notice you are in the center of the storm

Especially project managers have this blind spot. Outsiders, like the customer PM, a sparring trustee, or your manager can see the typhoon that surrounds you. For this reason, invite others to proof-read, to attend meetings as an observer, or to quality-check your engagements.

15. Talking to more experts gets you more work.

To attack a problem you are wise to consult an expert, but consulting multiple experts has a side effect: You will burn additional effort to handle their advice. No expert opinion is ever that “all is fine”. Any self respecting expert will force himself to suggest one action, even if the problem does not really need it.

16. Gift-wrap unrecoverable damages

Despite assertiveness (lesson 4) occasionally we end up paying the bill for a change, a bad luck event, or whatever. When that happens, never do it quietly. Proclaim for all to hear of your sacrifice, and package it as a gift - on record - to the customer/partner. There will be a next event, and in that future negotiation you start by listing all the gifts you gave before. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

17. SPVEM is a million times better than SMART

After 15 years of feeling low from having to set ‘personal goals’ for the year - a neccessary evil in every job I have had, anywhere - to make the HR person happy, and to have something on paper that more or less resembles my responsibility. The issue is that it always came out unmotivating, boring, clerical, or focusing on process rather than value. SMART goals suck. We can do soooo much better!

Let’s start with your life’s purpose in 5 minutes:

Then, meet SPVEM: Scary Positive Visual Exciting Measureable goals. It’s a breath of fresh air. If you have a LinkedInLearning subscription, I recommend Chris’ course on Success, very down to earth. My yearly goals, yes I still dread writing them every year, actually are energizing to read, and they lift me up.

18. Choose to be easy to manage

As a project manager (or any other kind of manager) you experience first-hand what other people are like to manage. Bob is quiet until you remind him three times a progress report is due. And Suzanne reports on her progress bombarding everyone with technical details. So you say: “It’s just the way they are”?

I learned: not to be fooled that way Whatever people dread doing gets reported on in an opaque mist of prose. Traditional project managers will cling to records and reports, of nothingness. They know nothing is really progressing, but they need the records to show the paper trail proof: “not my fault”. And so the work gets pushed to next quarter, or discarded as not needed anymore. Someone saved himself a lot of annoyance there! And that was entirely on purpose. Reporting about one’s own progress influences one’s autonomy.

Conversely, it’s surprisingly easy to report exactly what & when at the detail level your (project) manager needs from you. Having this skill of course gives you power: use it to steer your destiny toward your self-defined (and agreed) success (see 17). Discipline yourself into sending your manager the ‘perfect’ self-progress-report before you are requested to, consistently. Make it look nice (a chart?), make it to the point. Make it a blessing to read: upliftingly positive, and REAL (not robotic). Add emotion! Do not expect a reply - in fact use NNTR - but be confident your manager reads the daily/weekly gold nugget you send. It’s what you would like to receive yourself in her shoes.

In the end, I learned to consider my manager the person whom I should continually prepare to be my standby: Standby to help me push my rock up the hill, help me reach those Exciting goals (professionally) I have set myself. Being easy to manage is my choice for that purpose only. And this perspective is wonderfully liberating.

PS. Having a good manager makes all the difference. A thank you to mine: Dan, for reviewing this article, for non-disclosure of any trade secrets.

• Photo by Dmitry Demidov from Pexels *