Thriving Through Transformation
If you got to this site, it’s probably because we got in touch!
If that’s not your case, I’m even happier that you came here! It means I might have something that you need!
In all cases, right now you will be able to know me a little better through my social accounts, I’m leaving here my LinkedIn, that, so far, is the one I have been updating the most!
Enjoy your day!
Luiz Alberto Crema
Thriving Through Transformation
Je suis heureux d’annoncer que j’ai un blog! Il est tout neuf, je suis en train d’en faire depuis Mars!
Lorsque j’ai écrit ce premier paragraphe, j’ai vu le mot «depuis» là-bas, et cela m’a fait réfléchir au processus de démarrage et à la façon dont il est profondément lié à la transformation.
Ce blog n’est ancien, mais il n’est par nouveau aussi, car il y a quelques articles avant celui-ci.
Lorsque de nouvelles idées arrivent, nous faisons des essais, des prototypes, nous en discutons, créons des attentes seuls ou en petits groupes. C’est ce que j’ai fait ici, et tout cet effort n’est pas encore considéré comme un changement, car rien resemble différent d’avant.
Nous comprenons tout cela comme un «changement» après qu’il a été annoncé et impliquons plus de gens, car alors cela devient tangible, il y a une pression pour le résoudre, à ce stade, peu importe si le changement aura lieu ou non, il doit devenir le nouveau statu quo ou être aboli.
C’est ainsi que les changements se produisent, ils ne sont jamais nouveaux. Ils sont toujours là, sous la surface, poussant doucement comme des chuchotements. Nous pouvons les sentir, mais ils ne sont pas encore clairs.
Ils doivent devenir un changement lorsqu’ils ont déjà un élan, une force de départ qui fournit l’inertie pour être résilient contre toutes les forces opposées qui tenteront de les arrêter.
Dans la gestion de projet, nous utilisons la réunion de lancement, où beaucoup d’efforts ont été déployés et son temps pour annoncer à toute l’équipe et aux parties prenantes qu’il s’agit d’un projet réel.
Dans mon cas, je suis en train de créer une routine d’affichage, de la maintenir pendant quelques mois avant de l’annoncer, alors voilà…
J’ai commencé mon tout nouveau blog de trois mois!
Je suis brésilien, ainsi la langue que j’ai appris comment un enfant c’est le portugais. La-bas, j’ai écouté quelques mots et concepts dans la télé quand je regardais les “novelas” (feuilletons) ou les journaux. Dan ces temps, j’écoutais quelques fois quand ils parlaient d’affaires, et de ces portefeuilles de clients, le mots “carteira” e “pasta”. Ces mots la signifient exactement portefeuille en français.
Quelques ans après, quand je suis grandi et j’ai décidé travailles avec gestion de projets, on a appris le concept de “Gestão de Portfolio”, quand on a des programmes et des projets ensemble et gestionné pour un région, ou un service d’une entreprise.
Moi, j’ai trouvé le concept facile de comprendre, et je n’ai fait la liaison entre le concept de “portfolio” e “carteira”. Maintenant, quand je parle de gestion de projets avec des brésiliens, on ne parle que de portfolio, et on se comprend très bien, donc le mot “carteira” n’est pas utilisé.
Mais, pour quelques personnes qui ne connait pas de gestion de projets, cet concept n’est pas facile de comprendre, et en diverse moments, j’ai des difficultés pour expliquer le mot “portfolio”.
La semaine dernière, j’ai décidé que j’irais apprendre le mots utilisé pour les francophones quand ils parlent de gestion de projets. Un de les premières mots et concepts que j’ai vu été “Gestion de Portefeuille”. En ce moment la liaison a eu du sens.
J’ai découvrit que l’origine de le mot “portfolio” en anglais c’est en fait française (portefeuille) et italienne (portafoglio), et ils n’utilisent pas les mots “wallet” ou “folder”, la traduction directe de portefeuille en ces cas.
Pour moi, c’était amusant découvrir cela! Et à partir de maintenant j’irais utiliser le plus le mots “carteira” ou “pasta” quand je parle de gestion de portefeuille avec mes collègues de travail du Brésil.
“Why would we discuss that, it will never happen? I have more important things to do now, that are actually happening…”
This was the phrase I heard in a meeting I created to start the risk management process. We were supporting a growing company to implement their Project Management Framework and PMO.
We have gone through all Project Management Knowledge Areas, and understood which good practices were fit to their size and culture. We knew at that time they were not mature enough in project management at that time to embrace all desired tools and techniques, and their business model also wouldn’t allow them to do so.
One of the biggest challenges we faced was around Risk Management. This is a tricky area, because on one hand it is easy to understand that something will go wrong, no matter how hard you try to avoid it. On the other hand, it is hard to turn that abstract concept into tangible issues and action plans.
We really looked at Risk Management with care. We created templates to help with risk identification, response plans and even contingency plans, and risk management meetings that were supposed to take place weekly, and they did for a while. After some weeks, we realized that these meetings were getting empty because there were no more risks to be identified, they said, and the evolution of those identified earlier was very uncertain.
Even though we were not the project execution team, we attended some of their meetings as support. On doing that we realized something remarkably interesting. They were discussing risks at their weekly status meetings. The real problem here was they were discussing risks, but not treating them as such.
After this finding, we suggested adding risk as a mandatory subject in the agenda of the execution status meetings. This way, risk tools, such as the risk identification sheet, or the risk response forms were brought as an asset to the meetings.
This approach streamlined their process, as there was no longer the need to transfer the notes from the minutes to another document. They were now bringing the appropriate template to help them make the right questions around the issues, or risks, they were foreseeing.
In the end, those intangible ideas were related to what was happening in the project. The perspective change helped them answer that question they asked in the beginning: “Why should we spend time on something that may not even happen?” because now they could correlate that to the real world.
On the last few months I have been into a very special challenge. I have been given the task to train experts around their own work.
This is strange, as soon as they are the experts, and even if I know the subject in depth, they know it better, because they are the ones who really perform the work.
Around 5 years ago this company came to us with the task to understand what were the best practices around their global operations, in this case, project management. Their objective was to standardize their processes globally based on them.
They had an enormous quantity of projects being planned and implemented, but each region had a different standard to be followed, and the documents provided, even though fulfilling the requirements to go through their tollgate process, were not standardized. Basically, each project was presented in a different way.
This allowed huge quality variation among the information delivered, therefore, it was getting harder to streamline the decision making around which project of the portfolio was more fit to the company strategy.
At that point, I was invited to support an initiative that would gather all those project documents which were successful, and presented good quality throughout all company’s regions.
With good communication and stakeholder engagement plans, we were able to understand what they had in common, and create a list of what should be the minimal information to be supplied, and how was the better way to present it according to the company’s values, culture and expectations.
After getting this done, we were able to define templates and guidance documents to create a standard to be followed globally.
As it’s been done for more than five years now, even if the main objective remained, the scope of work for each phase of this initiative changed. Here is a summary of what was done so far:
This incredible transformation process has been implemented using several good practices around business analysis, project management, requirements elicitation, stakeholders engagement, change and knowledge management. There are many other side initiatives and next steps to this new environment that were created.
Now, the challenge is to keep the teams engaged and adherent to the new procedures implemented. Even if they are the experts and they know it better. I am happy to being able to explain the reasons they are using the tools provided, how they would be better used and how they relate to the current company’s policies.
Last week I have been confronted with a very interesting situation.
It was presented to me a simple yet powerful list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) that was shared to a global team, regarding to transformational initiatives that are being deployed through all levels of their operations.
That, per se, is a big deal, and a FAQ is a must in these cases.
I received an email asking my thoughts around it in a table, right after receiving another notification of a news article mentioning the importance of this FAQ, and where to find it.
When I received both notifications and gone through the article and the file, an idea came to my mind. Why not use the same content using a better tool?
The table format is awesome to brainstorm, understand the problem and visualize the results at once, but it is not responsive enough to be used in every situation.
So I turned it into an online list that could provide different views of the same content at once, solving the responsiveness issue of the table.
Problem solved! Everything worked and I added one more ability to my skillset! Awesome, eh?
Not so much, I was so enthusiastic about what I did, that when I shared it with the person who provided the first table, I didn’t remember to send him a simple heads up mentioning what I was thinking, and asking what he really needed.
There were some next steps to this process, such as advertising this new formatted list to everyone, and settling that as a normal procedure when they need information about the transformation process.
Now I have this additional step: Understanding what was the expectation around it, and if what was done, as good as it is, matches this expectation.
We all go through this, we sometimes infer what’s to be done, and do it right away, without checking with our stakeholders what they think about it, to save some time.
Making it right the first time becomes a matter of luck in these cases. But it is uncommon, and we end up making it wrong, which makes us lose all the work done, or worse, work twice to correct it.
Doing something good is different than doing it right, because the right thing to do is what is expected, or even better, exceed expectations!
The summer is gone, the crops are under snow and we are stuck at home, no way to get out after a major blizzard.
There are many stories about preparing to the bad times while we are in the good ones.
Personally, I heard fewer stories of those who, during bad times, in spite of getting desperate, or even hibernating, and waiting for the good times to come again, spent that time preparing to speed up the come back.
Independently if there is a crisis or not, record every good idea you have, even if you don’t have time to put it in place due to all the daily activities, these would be our “standby bank”.
We know that everything will change even if we are part of the cause, or the consequence. When we are part of the cause, and we are driving change, the main effort is to face the inertia of the “status quo”.
What if this force gets into standby, and we are part of the consequence of a change?
This is the time for us to pick every idea we had in our “standby bank”, or even in those changes we were suffering to put in place in the good times, and use them as a contingency plan.
Then, the effect of our changes will become stronger, and when the blizzard is gone, and the sun is shining, we will feel like we are up to speed quicker, but in the the end, we didn’t even stop.
How my daughter came to the conclusion she didn’t want to play a game?
For some weeks, my 11 years old daughter, fan of Harry Potter, asked me to let her install Wizards Unite, the “game that all her friends play”.
She was asking me that because I put parental control on her phone, and I use that to be able to negotiate with her what she can, or cannot do with it.
It was the end of winter vacations, and she came with a strategy to convince me to install the game. She would have it installed for one day, just to understand how the game is, and probably share the experience with her friends.
I approved her strategy, and added some conditions to, perhaps, let her keep the game installed after that.
The first condition was her to produce a report explaining her experience, in a very specific format: two letter sized pages, typed on the computer, font size 12, single space and straight margins.
The second condition was me to read it and be able to understand the game and evaluate if she could keep the game installed.
The third condition was that she should deliver me this report the next day, until noon.
She started to study about writing and text production, she is reading books and articles about that. My intention with the challenge I proposed was to help her train those skills based on something she legitimately desired.
As we came to an agreement, I let her install and play the game. Of course, the game is very well produced, and designed to have all her attention, starting with simple, yet challenging missions. In less than 30 minutes she was already asking to go to the park nearby, to hunt monsters and earn extra points.
I went there with her right after, and actually helped her playing, asking how to control, and helping her to perform some enchantments and potions. After we came back home, I realized she was still with her phone, but not playing the game anymore, she was talking to her friend while watching a video.
At this moment I started asking her about her report, as in the beginning she was with a notebook taking notes about the game.
Without further ado, she has gone to her computer and started typing her impressions. The first paragraph was enough, because her friend was back from her vacations trip and invited her to play. She got very happy with that, as she didn’t see her friend for 3 weeks now. In the end of that night, I turned off her computer with that first paragraph still there.
After that, watching TV, I asked her again about the report, and the answer surprised me. In her words, she explained that the game was good, and she enjoyed playing it, but she knew that my wife and I would not let her play all the time, and also we wouldn’t let her go out to play it in the streets alone – and yes, she was right about it – therefore all the effort of making a two pager would not worth it. It was too much for such a small reward.
I still don’t have a specific outcome for what happened. She never asked to install it again. I understand that her conclusion, and the maturity it took to make it, made me very proud of her, but I confess I was waiting for a different end to this story.
I hoped that the game would be good enough to keep her motivated and accomplish her task, even with the fact that her friend calling her to play in the mean time and the restrictions we could make after that, but it was not.
Her goal was to finish the report at noon about her experience. Right now, 11:58AM, I have just finished this “report”.
P.S.: I wrote this on Jan 4th, and after more than 2 months, she never mentioned about the game again, what confirms my conclusion at that time.
I was talking to my friend a moment ago, and he was afraid of the outcomes of the last pandemics.
At this moment, I realized that these global events, with huge impact everywhere were not my priority right now.
It doesn’t mean I don’t care, actually I do, because it is changing most of what is going to happen to me in the shorter term.
In the last two years, I opted to make a greater change in my personal life, without even knowing about the outcomes of it in the longer term.
Big changes doesn’t mean quick changes, it takes some time and a lot of preparation to digest so many new things. So, in spite of looking of every change on the long term, and freezing due to the incapacity of solving all of them because there are events that does not depend on you, I opted to look at the smaller goals in the next step.
The way I define the next step is that action I can take alone, without depending on others.
My family and I depend on so many factors that whichever decision or move we make right now towards our goal is just another lucky guess. The current situation doesn’t change that, it is just another factor to be aware of.
We need to finish the current step to look ahead with some perspective. There are several paths to take, and we are studying them from far, just like the options that are given to us by Google Maps when we need to go a different city to visit, and we need to define if we want to go by bus, car or train, if we want to go by the toll route, or we are fine getting some traffic, or even if it worths going.
The long path ahead will require many adjustments in our directions. Being able to look to the sides, and see the surroundings is mandatory in this case, and for that we are walking with a short stride.
Today I was introduced to an old quotation that summarizes most of my decisions, I mean, the ones I made consciently.
“Change, before you have to.”
Jack Welch
Sometimes you have to accept some external and uncontrollable risks on your life, because you wouldn’t be able to avoid, transfer or mitigate them. But this doesn’t mean you won’t have to have a contingency plan ready.
My contingency plan to changes I cannot control is creating my own changes, learning something new, getting out of a comfort zone, trying and learning new things and being creative!
The fact that we build a new status actually drives us towards the opportunities around that, and those old risks lose importance, as we moved away from the previous status.
Change to have a new perspective and see the external and uncontrollable changes the size they really are.
Then you will be able to stop only seeing them as threatening risks, and open yourself to turn them into valuable opportunities that now you can capture, and thrive through transformation.
Today I was presented to an unconventional way to report about my learnings on an event. I was supposed to describe my “Ah-ha!” moments and why I had them.
This approach is about your discoveries, your “Eureka” moments, and seemed to be very well received by all the participants of the event. It made me rethink about my capacity of making every opportunity an “Ah-ha!” moment.
It is interesting because you can add more color to some facts that should seem secondary at a first glance, such as the behaviors and small attitudes you saw.
Sometimes we are so involved into our experience, that we don’t feel able to learn from others and see through their perspective. We forget that every opportunity may take a round “Ah-ha!” from our mouth!
We may already know what is being exposed to us. We know that so much that we already forgot how we started it, the difficulties we have gone through to make it as natural as it is right now.
But when we force ourselves to look at that experiences with a discovery perspective, and we remember all the effort we had. The “Ah-ha!” is stronger, because we learn again, and now with some background.
Now I am very glad to have learned and applied this new approach.
Looking forward to my next “Ah-ha!”