Filmmaker Steven Soderbergh recently spoke at the San Francisco Film Festival, giving his take about what’s wrong with the movie industry today. (Yes, of course it’s a long article. Think about how much is wrong with today’s movies!)

Along the way, he made a very valuable point about after-action reviews (or project debriefs, as I prefer to call them), using the attendance figures for his own recent film Side Effects as the example. Here’s the key passage:

How do we figure out what went wrong? The answer is: We don’t. Everybody’s already moved on to the next movie they have to release.

How many projects don’t get debriefed because “everybody’s already moved on to the next” project?

Yet without debriefs, Soderbergh’s question remains hanging: How do we figure out what went wrong? Equally importantly, how do we figure out what went right?

People make assumptions. Sometimes these people are smart about project management (or movies). Sometimes they’re not. And even smart people can draw the wrong conclusions.

A project debrief takes only a small amount of time even on a large project. I figure it works out like this:

• Project manager: 90 minutes (prep, meeting, summarizing)
• Attendees: 30 minutes (20 minutes for the meeting, another few minutes reading the summary)

More time would be valuable, but even 30 minutes/person can make an enormous difference in the success of future projects – and the happiness of the team.

Oh — and if you ever go to movies and wonder why there aren’t more good ones, or think about the movie business at all, listen to the talk or read the transcript. (Note that it has three or four “blue” words in it.)

Here’s the full passage from which I quoted (“[laughter]” in original):

But let’s go back to Side Effects for a second. This is a movie that didn’t perform as well as any of us wanted it to. So, why? What happened? It can’t be the campaign because all the materials that we had, the trailers, the posters, the TV spots, all that stuff tested well above average. February 8th, maybe it was the date—was that a bad day? As it turns out that was the Friday after the Oscar nominations are announced, and this year there was an atypically large bump to all the films that got nominated, so that was a factor.  Then there was a storm in the Northeast, which is sort of our core audience, Nemo came in, so God, obviously, is getting me back for my comments about monotheism [laughter]. Was it the concept? There was a very active decision early on to sell the movie as kind of a pure thriller and kind of disconnect it from this larger social issue of everyone taking pills. Did that make the movie seem more commercial, or did it make it seem more generic? What about the cast? Four attractive white people …this is usually not an obstacle. [laughter]  The exit polls were very good, and reviews were good. How do we figure out what went wrong? The answer is: We don’t. Everybody’s already moved on to the next movie they have to release.

 

Heads up. Adobe has a Flash update that contains security fixes (and thus is probably worth installing), but it also contains something that technically meets the definition of a virus:

• You didn’t ask for it
• It installs anyway
• It runs on your computer and does stuff
• It will ask you for money to remove threats to your computer

Now, unlike a real virus, any threats it finds will be real, not malware it put there itself, and the money will go to a legitimate (but very annoying) antivirus program. So if you don’t have current antivirus software, you could go ahead with this… or you could should must immediately go get one of the excellent free antivirus/firewall programs or make a conscious decision about purchasing one.

Note the tiny box that comes pre-checked in the Adobe update screen.

There’s nothing illegal about it, but it is in my opinion dishonest. (Other folks would simply call it marketing.)

Unless you really want this extra software on your computer, uncheck the box before installing the Adobe update. (And if you don’t have antivirus software, get it. Now.)

Journalist and gadfly H.L. Mencken once wrote¹, “There is always an easy solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.”

In 30+ years of managing projects (and 60+ of life itself), I’ve learned to respect that maxim as perhaps even more important than Murphy’s Law.

However, every law has its exception, which leads me to this exchange between co-workers:

A: “Hey, my start bar is going crazy, and my keyboard won’t respond.”

B: “Pick up your cell phone.”

A: “That worked! Was the radiation interfering with the computer?”

B: “No, it was sitting on your space bar.”

Some stuff is broken all of the time, all stuff is broken some of the time, but not everything is broken all of the time.

Catching up on some work while on vacation (everyone else is still asleep!), I saw a note on “suicide pricing” in legal, pointed out by Pat Lamb of Valorem in Chicago.

I don’t know how true or widespread the trend might be, but it’s worrisome in a much broader sense than the article suggests. Not only is it not such a good thing for firms, in the long run it’s not such a good thing for clients either, since in other industries, these trends keeps spiraling downwards until Stein’s Law¹ kicks in.

Consider airlines. How much flying do we do, for example, in regional jets (carriers branded as adjuncts of United or Delta, for example, but really independent entities) where pilots are paid would-you-like-fries-with-that wages. How much critical maintenance is outsourced — to folks who will not be betting their own lives on those planes — or put off?

Yet, in a focus group I read about recently², customers were asked about a cross-country round trip flight for a low amount – $300, I think. Once that was set as their anchor price, they were asked how much extra they’d pay for a better experience. The leader described first/business class without using the name – free meals and drinks, wider seats, more legroom, first-on-first-off boarding, etc. $325? Most hands still raised… but not all. $350? Most hands now down. $375? Only one hand in the air… and he wavered.

I’ve seen this myself in action. It really plays out like this. Once a very low anchor price is established, few want to spend more, even when they get more.

Of course, some people will always pay for first class, just as there will always be bet-the-company matters that receive a different  pricing level.

Some will. But most won’t.

And once prices drop below a certain point, service degrades. (Love your cell company? Your cable company?) It has to, because service costs money, and companies that don’t make profits disappear rapidly. No matter how much lawyers love what they do, they won’t do it for free for very long.

Kids are stirring, and we’ve got a tee time later, so I’ll just leave this note with a suggestion that you take a look at the article. I don’t know how widespread this practice is… but it’s a scary thought.

Steve Sinofsky had a variety of posts at Microsoft for 20+ years, including leading the Windows division during the difficult transition from Windows Vista to Windows 7.¹

Here is a recent article of his on why micromanagers often “edit,” or correct the work of others – a very common practice in the legal world. Not only does editing damage the team’s ability to give their best work, it drains energy from the manager as well. (“UX” in his post is slang for “user experience.”)

Of course, there will be specific times a lawyer needs to edit, or instruct – e.g., when a court requires a document be formatted just so. Don’t let those occasional times overflow their rather small bucket and seep into the rest of the work you do as a team lead and project or people manager.

(Sinofsky left Microsoft abruptly five months ago.)

I got the following email offer from Amazon over the weekend on one of my non-business accounts:

Nice to know my book is at the top of the list… unless, of course, Amazon knows that this account is mine and they have an ego-stroking algorithm.

Anyway, if it’s on sale for 10% off, this might be a great time to grab a copy. Or get ten for your colleagues….

(The book right below it is a rather interesting read as well. Unfortunately, a number of reviewers didn’t notice the question mark after “Lawyers” and took issue with Susskind’s premise without even reading the book.)

Interesting story about a pilot going the extra mile for one of his passengers.

(Tip o’ the hat to James Fallows for pointing this out.)

I’ll circle ’round below to why the umpire fallacy is critical to understanding management and project management, but let me start by setting up the problem.

At his confirmation hearings for Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, John Roberts famously said,

Judges are like umpires. Umpires don’t make the rules; they apply them…. [I]t’s my job to call balls and strikes.

Leaving aside the politics here,. what is the job of an umpire?

From a literary (not politics) standpoint, Roberts tries to have it both ways within his metaphor. Which is the umpire’s primary job:

1. “They apply [the rules].”
2. “To call balls and strikes.”

I have served as an umpire for some time at the Little League level. Virtually all of my on-field work as to do with calling balls and strikes – or fair/foul, caught/dropped, out/safe. Every one of these is a judgment call. It may look easy on TV. It’s anything but easy behind the plate, especially given how well some 12-year-old kids can pitch from 40 feet away.

Even fair or foul can be tricky. Most of the time you can see the lines well from behind home plate, but just a couple of days ago a hitter bunted off the plate,¹ the ball taking a small hop toward third base before the catcher snagged it. I got my mask off, pivoted to view the play while avoiding the batter who was himself trying to avoid the catcher… and couldn’t see exactly where the catcher touched the ball because his body covered it as he grabbed it. Fair or foul? Working solo, with no field umpire to help,² I had no clear view of whether the ball was fair or not. Except that it was definitively fair, because that’s what I called it.³

Thinking back on the past three seasons, I’ve had maybe three rules questions.⁴ On the other hand, maybe 40 pitches a game are close enough to require an ump to call them, and there’s at least one play every couple of innings that’s very close (out/safe) on the bases.

So an umpire’s primary job is threefold:

1. Get in the best possible position to see each pitch and each play.
2. Call the close ones – ball/strike, safe/out, etc.
3. Manage the game.

Each of these has a corollary making it more “interesting”:

1. Positioning: You’ll occasionally guess wrong about positioning.
2. Close calls: By definition, other umps might make different judgments.
3. Sometimes you have to “sell” the tough calls without knowing for sure the “right” answer.

Managing Projects and People: Are You an Umpire?

A project manager isn’t an umpire in the “apply the rules” sense, yet that is where I see so many (poor) project managers spending their time and energy. They invest hours in Gantt charts and project plans and in fighting change requests… and minutes in managing the people and ambiguous situations within the project. Yet if you don’t do the latter, the former will be ineffective – and will brand you as ineffective among those working on your projects.

The same thoughts apply to people management.

A manager (of people or projects or both) will spend much of her time on the same three non-rules-based issues as an umpire, and run into the same corollaries.

Positioning: Do you have the information needed to make decisions? Are you preparing yourself – in advance – so that you are likely to have what you need when you need it, even though you don’t know in advance when the decisions will come or even fully what they’ll entail? It’s much harder to make the close calls without being “in position.” It’s even harder when team members can see that you are out of position, either because you’re outside the flow of information, out of favor with management, or simply so caught up in your own urgent minutiae that you miss the big picture.

Know that sometimes even the best manager can be caught out of position and have to act based on partial information despite knowing he could have had better data. It will happen. The key to success is minimizing the frequency with which it happens. You can get away with being in the wrong spot occasionally if the team believes you’re usually exactly where you need to be.

Close Calls: The higher up you go in management (whether people or projects), the closer the calls. Obvious calls get decided at lower levels in the project, or by the people in the room at the time the decision has to be made. Only bad project managers insist on injecting themselves into obvious decisions.⁵ Moderately close calls go up a level. Only the very close ones – the 50/50 or nearly-50/50 calls – go to the top.

If a call is truly 50/50 (or close to that), in the long run it makes little difference which one you choose, assuming that you’ve truly considered and weighed the various factors and ramifications. Sure, one call may turn out better than another, just as some called strikes have more impact on a game than others. But that’s the case only in retrospect. At the time you make the call, you don’t have the benefit of hindsight. Do the best you can with what you’ve got, and get on with it.

Game Management: You can’t make the project “fair” (some projects are far more difficult or filled with traps and tribulation than others), but you can ensure the team works fairly. That people are treated well, and evenhandedly. That the client’s interests and business goals remain in focus. That information is shared rather than hoarded. That you don’t play favorites, or play politics within the team.⁶

Because you will make mistakes. You will fail at times. But if the team has your back, you’ll succeed far more often than you’ll fail. And to build team support, you need to get in position, make the close calls (and accept responsibility for their ramifications), and manage the game.

To do all that is to be an umpire.

Go out and call a great project game.

Oh, why not – a final rules quiz. Can an outfielder catch an infield fly?⁷

Quick quiz. Why are you not permitted to use your computer during takeoff and landing?

1. It will interfere with the avionics (instruments).
2. The FAA can’t find enough board members to hold a meeting to change the rule.
3. The pilot demands you pay attention to her instead, even though she’s not saying anything.
4. So you don’t put your tray table down by accident.
5. Power-hungry cabin attendants like enforcing stupid, useless rules.
6. Because no one should have to do email all the time.

While I personally support #6 wholeheartedly, the real answer is #3. Takeoff and landing are the most dangerous parts of a flight, the times where quick, effective responses by passengers can occasionally save lives (cf. the US Air Hudson River landing as one recent example). However, if people are engaged with their electronic devices, they will not be able to hear the cabin attendants or cockpit crew telling them what to do, or will be slower to respond. While the US Air passengers had four minutes to prepare, in runway emergencies seconds matter.

Next question: The prohibition isn’t just on computers, but on “any device with an on/off switch.” Why?

1. It takes time to adopt an FAA rule, and they’re worried that computers will evolve faster than they can keep up.
2. Even iPods and Kindles contain microprocessors and operating systems and are thus technically computers.
3. The flight attendants don’t want to have to argue with you over whether that thing is a computer or not.
4. The flight attendants made that part up because they’re power hungry.
5. Because the airlines are preparing to charge you a $25 fee if you want to leave a device on and the current practice prepares you to accept it.

I’m not convinced that #5 is a total fantasy, but the correct answer again is #3. Prepping for takeoff and landing are busy for the cabin attendants, who really do have work to do beyond pushing heavy carts into your elbows and withholding the can when they pour you a soda. During those times they become the plane’s safety officers… and since their own lives are part of the deal, they properly make sure the job is done right. If they have to argue with a passenger, they lose time… and may have to ask the pilot to abort the takeoff or landing because they can’t complete the FAA-mandated safety checks.

You may have noted that on flights with seatback entertainment units, the cabin attendants generally insist that passengers use only simple earbuds rather than noise-canceling headphones.¹ Again, they need to be sure you can hear them should they need your attention quickly.

So what does all this have to do with Legal Project Management?

I see two clear connections.

1. Pay Attention

It’s hard to read the subtle signals from your project team or the client if you’re wrapped up in email, reports, task-switching among projects, or checking Opening Day baseball scores.² You need to turn off the distractions to tune into the project itself.

Tuning in includes MBWA, Management By Walking Around. Go talk with your team in situ, at their desks and in their offices. Get a feel for what they’re working on, and what they’re stuck on. Don’t sit in the middle of your web and play spider-and-fly.

2. Look for the Real Reasons Behind Issues

Problems arise because of underlying issues that may be quite different from their obvious manifestations. The most common of all such issues is understanding the client’s real business problem, especially when they try to present it to you as a legal problem.³

However, in-project problems often have deeper root causes. Why is this task late, for example? It’s certainly possible the person working on it screwed up the time estimate. But it’s also possible – likely, in fact – that an issue such as these lies behind the delay:

1. He didn’t get a clear assignment.
2. He and the assigner didn’t clarify the assignment.
3. He had to wait for someone else to complete work on a previous task before he could go ahead or could finish.
4. Another people manager or project manager reprioritized his time on a different project.
5. You reprioritized his time on the same project and didn’t realize the ripple effect you’d create.
6. The task definition – the task’s “Done” – kept changing, requiring work not in the time budget.

You could probably add another half dozen reasons yourself.

Don’t assume the obvious – or the answer you want most to believe. “It’s not under the project manager’s control” goes along with power-hungry flight attendants and everything’s-a-computer. There may at times be truth to such explanations, but they’re not at the core of the problem.

Now, in preparation for landing, please return your seatbacks to their most uncomfortable position.

Story the First:

Once upon a time, in a land far away¹, lived a great company to work for. Despite its bad rap in the press and a serious lack of “coolth,” it created great products that, if occasionally flawed at first, it continue to improve.

It’s head and co-founder believed in doing well by doing good, that if the company created great products, great wealth would follow.² The employees were very smart – indeed, were often hired for their smarts – and contributed all sorts of creative ideas. They had a huge research division where they hired extra-smart people to work on pretty much whatever they wanted, in the hope that (a) the computer world would benefit, (b) the world as a whole would benefit, and (c) they’d eventually figure out how to make money from some of the weird stuff.

One of their best-known products, in fact, was largely built by a couple of developers “doing their own thing” (well, working on a project different from the one they were paid for, shielded by their manager, who saw the value in what they were building).

That company even created a free product that soon most everyone in the world was using.

Then, things changed. So did executive management. The company began focusing on money more than doing good. They stopped working on that free product because, well, everyone was already using it and it brought in no revenue while consuming lots of resources.

Soon a bunch of other smart people formed a non-company – “open source” – and created two products that competed with Microsoft products: their core operating system and that free thing.

Microsoft knew how Windows made money and supported the company, and so they – after a delay – doggedly set about competing with Linux. They didn’t beat it fully, but they won dramatically in most arenas.

But that free thing that everyone used and people appreciated…. No revenue there, so who cares that Firefox is competing with Internet Explorer, that it’s becoming noticeably better than IE. And now Google is bringing out yet another freebie in that space, called Chrome. But we don’t care. No money here.

Until one day they realized that Firefox and Chrome offered an end-around for Windows and Office – not directly, but the smart folks still remaining could see how other smart folks could create tough-to-beat products that would damage the value of Microsoft’s core offerings. So they finally, and belatedly, realized they had to fix up tired, stale IE. They’ve made strides, but they’re still playing catch-up, and no one pays it much attention beyond the fact that it comes with Windows.³

Story the Second:

Once upon a time, in a land everyone loved so much their traffic and housing costs nearly choked it, lived a great company to work for. It had great press and “coolth” coming out its ears. It created great products that, if occasionally flawed at first, it continue to improve.

It’s head and co-founder believed in not doing evil, and that if the company created great products, great wealth would follow.⁴ The employees were very smart – indeed, were often hired for their smarts – and contributed all sorts of creative ideas. They had a huge research division where they hired extra-smart people to work on pretty much whatever they wanted, in the hope that (a) the computer world would benefit, (b) the world as a whole would benefit, and (c) they’d eventually figure out how to make money from some of the weird stuff.

Most of their best-loved products were, in fact, originally built by developers “doing their own thing” (well, working on a project different from the one they were paid for, shielded by a policy called 20% time).

That company created lots of free products that soon millions of people were using – Reader, Calendar Sync, and others.

Then, things changed. So did executive management. The company began focusing on money more than doing good. They stopped working on many free products because, well, who cared if everyone was using them? They brought in no revenue while consuming lots of resources. They allowed another to break without fixing it (Alerts) and banned one of their most popular and useful partners from their store (AdBlock).

In fact, they moved so far away from “don’t be evil” that many users started returning to the very competitor (see Story the First) whom they’d once derided as the Evil Empire.

Telling Stories

We don’t know the end of Story the Second yet. It’ll play out over the next few years.

One option is the Goneril/Regan story, from King Lear. Each sends the aging, abdicated king into the night after taking away some of the king’s supporters. When he reaches the home of the other, she takes away even more supporters and sends him into the night, ad infinitum (or until his companion and his fool tell him to forget the whole thing as he rages against injustice⁵).

Another is that both companies come to their senses and see the world as an infinitely complex place with interconnected systems. They realize that not only do their primary assets go home at night, their secondary assets (customers) can walk just as easily… and will do so if there are good alternatives and they don’t like working with that company anymore.

Or perhaps a third company will arise to take a bite out of the forbidden fruit. You know, the fruit with a bite taken out of the side. You’ve seen the logo. They’re not doing as well as they used to, and they’re astoundingly arrogant and their products are elegant, overpriced, and flawed, but they retain a ton of “coolth.”

We don’t know.

We will likely find out.

But Google, think about that large company 770 miles north of your home as the crow flies, or 844 miles by road. Learn from them. Keep angering and disappointing your users, and you’re likely to wake up one morning in the not too distant future to a world that’s passing you by for someone nicer.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.