Sometimes the most powerful way to engage in Intelligent Disobedience is to say no, especially when a task “opportunity” enters your office.

You are busy, juggling priorities and multiple initiatives, and you have an ambitious manager. At the same time we want to approach our managers, the business, and ourselves with integrity. Does it reflect high integrity when a task opportunity comes your way and you don’t know how you will accomplish it and you neglect to say something like…I can’t do that?

Intelligent Disobedience doesn’t mean we should be needlessly difficult. It does mean we should be true to ourselves and those around us. One of the most effective ways to do that and relieve undue stress, is to stop trying to juggle too much. If a work opportunity comes your way, and you don’t know how you will accomplish it, say no OR ask which of your major projects (or significant to-do items) you can “suspend” in order to accomplish this new task. You owe that brand of truth to your boss, your peers, your own sanity and your family!

The Harvard Business Review published an excellent article with this same theme - in fact it is in the top two best selling reprints in the history of the Harvard Business Review magazine. You can access the article via this link: http://hbr.org/1999/11/management-time-whos-got-the-monkey/ar/1

Recently, a colleague of mine turned around a situation with her manager by posing a VERY powerful question. She had been struggling with an ever expanding workload due to a senior manager with ambitions that outreached his ability to prioritize. What was this impactful question she posed to her senior leader?

“To be sure I’m not going to conflict with your actions, what are YOU doing to help bring this objective to fruition?”

What a question! It was posed with a focus on her own work effort so it was not directly threatening, yet it brought home the point that he was not treating this latest “great idea” by directing any of his own time towards it. The resulting discussion about the workload that my colleague was trying to manage, along with the priority of items in that workload was significant, setting a direction for her area of the business and her personal agenda.

This also established a tone for future discussions about new initiatives. All it took was one question; one well crafted question, driven by a desire to share information which was delivered with courage, to make a significant difference in the work environment for herself and her organization.

Few of us in the project world have the extent of authority that would be ideal to bring our projects to bear, especially in a world where most organizations launch more projects than they have resources to support. Given this project glut, and a lack of proper prioritization many project managers end up pulling their hair out trying to create schedules that have a chance of being remotely accurate. Team members come and go, commitment of resource availability changes regularly, and the project schedule becomes fiction almost the moment it is produced. So, how can a project manager work within a set of priorities for team members and their projects, when senior managers do not derive distinct priorities?

We won’t give you the old Nike adage, “just do it”, as this does not work. It takes a bit of a twist to make this work. In the case described above (and other scenarios where appropriate decisions aren’t being made) the astute and intelligently disobedient project manager will talk with their resource managers, derive a reasonable priority for the projects in process, and then create a project schedule with those priorities in mind. The produced schedule would then be accompanied by a note (after a face to face conversation) detailing the priorities derived, explain the rationale for them, and state at the end of the note, “I will manage assuming priorities are in place unless directed otherwise. If different priorities are to be followed, I will make changes according to those revised priorities.”

The self-empowerment shows initiative, and if done with appropriate homework will demonstrate business acumen and the ability to be practical in the face of competing pressures. It might also bring to light some issues that were not known or fully understood by the project sponsor. Lastly, it gives the diligent manager a better chance of creating a project delivery schedule within reasonable bounds, and will gain the support of busy project team members.

Project professionals are always taught to focus on the critical path - that string of tasks that constitutes the longest path through your project network, therefore representing the shortest possible time that you can complete a project.

There are times however - especially when recovering a troubled project - that making the critical path tasks a second priority may actually be prudent. During a troubled project, morale is low, and key stakeholders have usually lost faith in the project. It is time for a victory - that is, it is time for a VICTORY PATH.

The victory path is a string of tasks that will create a fast, short term deliverable that adds business value, and/or increases the faith stakeholders have in the project and the project team. A client of ours has put this into practice whilst recovering a troubled project, and the results are promising. They are using the term “victory path” within the organisation to describe this approach.

Our client sent us this note on the actions they are taking:

“I formulated a ‘strike team’ to ensure we focus on the victory path (key milestones for end of Feb 2010 and May 2010 ) after I had the discussion with my CEO and management here at my location. The “victory path” term is quite appealing to people here since I added it to my vocabulary – it’s got leverage!!!

The strike team is essentially a few of my engineers with 100% of their time ‘striking’ a specific body of work that I planned/scheduled (on a micro task level so I can keep a tighter watch on it).

This approach has re-energised their project and re-engaged senior stakeholders; the first critical steps to successfully recovering a troubled project.

So, another act of intelligent disobedience, going against the norm and focusing on a set of tasks not on the critical path, but those that create a short term deliverable.

We received this story from an attendee at a recent keynote presentation we delivered on Real World Program management…sometimes a simple and common image can show decisions in a different light.

In an Executive Program Review today, I used clipart of a person walking around with a tin cup, collecting coins. Along with the image, I included words to the effect of “I was reviewing the surveillance videos last night, and found this image of the VP of Engineering outside the CFO’s office looking for the $190k in added cost for the project additions approved over the past 7 weeks.”

We do not have a great closed loop on budget adjustments, and I’m sure that now the whole executive staff will recall the $190k in approved budget changes when the VP of Engineering shows up with that cup in hand… 

Sometimes management makes decisions in a vacuum, only when taken in the aggregate do we understand the implications to a program, and the organization as a whole. This was a very provocative and successful way to bring that to light, and make sure the appropriate action was taken to adjust the scope and budget successfully.

Truth from our own point of view – truth only each of us as individuals can bring – is the essence of intelligent disobedience. Packaging it, selling it, promoting it and bringing your truth to the “pool of information” that is used to make important decisions is paramount to being successful. Often it takes some unusual or creative actions to make this information known. Here is an interesting example:

A colleague of ours took a direct approach to getting a message across, in this case to an equipment vendor. She was having considerable difficulty getting appropriate safeguards installed to protect her mining processing equipment against the heat that is common in the Western Australia summer. The vendor (who was from the comparatively cooler climate of Northern Europe) kept attributing equipment failures to maintenance shortcomings, rather than the equipment’s inability to handle the Western Australia heat. She felt certain it was the temperature, and with some simple modifications to the equipment, the heat would no longer be an issue. After considerable perseverance (another trait of intelligent disobedience), she was able to convince a vendor maintenance manager to come to her mining site. Good fortune struck the day her vendor showed up on site, as it was almost 100F (38C), and quite humid. Her intelligent disobedience surfaced in the manner in which she “showed” this vendor maintenance manager how the heat was putting a strain on the operation of his company’s equipment.

Rather than just bringing him for a tour of the site, she arranged to have a few members of her team provide long and intricate details as to how the equipment was being utilized in her particular environment, and exactly what processes they were using to maintain the equipment. In many cases they actually showed the vendor the step by step processes they were using to maintain the equipment. All this was done in the mining maintenance facility, which isn’t air conditioned, in the extreme heat of the day. Add in the dust and noise of the operation of the mining equipment, this turned out to be a two hour demo that the vendor was not soon to forget.

In a somewhat cruel but crafty approach, our project management colleague went back to her air conditioned office after introducing the vendor manager to her staff and getting the demonstrations started. At the end of the demo, the vendor was more than happy to return to her cool office and discuss the equipment modification ideas she had been trying to promote for an extensive amount of time. He was all ears (and a bit of sweat)! After those discussions he enthusiastically carried the temperature tolerant modification ideas forward to his company. In a couple of months time, the engineering modifications were installed on the equipment, and the maintenance issues subsided.

A bit of perseverance, along with come creativity, and another problem is solved via intelligent disobedience!

Recently in a legal document I encountered a section titled “Reasonableness”. It read as follows: “Wherever a written consent from a Unit Holder is required it shall not be unreasonably withheld.”

That struck me as wholly subjective and therefore rather unusual in a legal document. The sentiment is admirable, surely. Be reasonable, sign this document. But how can we possibly know that what is reasonable to us is reasonable to others? If you think about it carefully, reasonableness must be the most subjective of terms. The Oxford English Dictionary describes it thus: “The quality of being reasonable or rational; rationality or The fact or quality of being amenable to reason, or of acting or thinking in a sensible manner.”

What is the point of this? Well, reasonableness can be contentious in a workplace or team environment. After all, what is a perfectly reasonable work request or directive to you might be considered completely irrational by someone else. What you think is a reasonable response to a work request or directive also depends very much on the ear of the beholder. That is to say unless you take the trouble of providing context and define what you consider reasonable, sensible and rational. Otherwise, you might be in for a surprise. We cannot assume that our reasonableness is universal. What is perfectly rational and sensible in one team, is frowned upon in another. What is reasonable in one culture is irrational in another. Workplaces are no exception.

Intelligent Disobedience involves expressing your best ideas, AND encouraging the expression of the best ideas of others to gain the greatest level of understanding. Those who embrace Intelligent Disobedience would not stop at the mediocre level of understanding represented by “reasonableness”, but would engage in the discussions required to reach a deeper more substantial position, and provide a more optimal bit of direction.

- Contributed by Marjolein Towler

Leadership requires an extraordinary degree of skill and integrity – the ability to know when to intervene, when to teach, when to coach, when to provide feedback and in what venue to provide all of this.  Leadership requires very deliberate and thoughtful consideration of those you are trying to lead - versus simply manage. The leader is more of an artist.

And what makes a good artist? Well first, there are those indescribable creative juices flowing from their very being onto the canvas.  Inspiration, flashes of insight, conceptual models taking shape with artfully crafted brushworks.  To be a good leader you need to draw on sometimes highly personal gut level decisions – when for example in a meeting to directly challenge a powerful senior leader whose new production changes will entirely throw off your budget allocations, or when to tell your highly talented new hire to back off on their new and risky approach for a technical solution. We have to assess our own risk profile against the potential gains to push back with these key business colleagues. The best leaders take these risks – and succeed – on a regular basis.

 One of the keys to doing this is to realize that we all look at the world through different lenses. We all have our own truth, and that truth differs from person to person. Understanding that the world is viewed via different lenses, and not just yours, is instrumental in conducting the sensitive conversations we have discussed here, and doing so successfully. Gather a “full set of pictures” through the many “lenses” people bring to the table and rich possibilities of how to proceed can come into focus. So, next time you feel the need to impulsively jump in and state your position, examine it from another person’s point of view.  Intelligent Disobedience is NOT about being silent, or holding back your opinions, it is just the opposite – it encourages us to speak up. However, it also encourages us to understand that our approach is not the only way, or the only view to a situation. The Intelligently Disobedient leader does jump in, but only after seeking to look at a situation through the lenses of others in addition to her own.

- Contributed by Elaine Krantz

Sometimes a sound can trigger the needed reaction!

After delivering a conference keynote on Intelligent Disobedience a delegate approached me to share this story…

As a business analyst at a major hospital, he was frustrated by project sponsorship that wasn’t stepping to the plate to establish priorities for critical staff members so the project team could collect appropriate requirements for what was being called a “priority one” project. After many attempts at communication with various sponsors to try to rectify this, the team decided demonstrative action was needed. Using all three of the fundamental elements of intelligent disobedience - risk, creativity and persistence - they decided to try one more attempt at communicating the need.

The team took a “crash cart” - yes one of the hospital rolling carts holding a heart monitor and a defibrillator that was recently repaired and needed to be tested.  They rolled it into the hospital’s Board of Directors meeting. One of the project team members had the heart sensors hooked up to himself under his dress shirt and the monitor was working; it was beeping in the normal way as his heart beat. (Well, maybe a little faster than normal, because he was a bit nervous!) The project manager briefly described the problem and when it came to describing the impact on the project, they unplugged the sensors from the monitor, sending it “flat-lining”, with the accompanying long steady beep tone. That noise alone triggered a reaction with the senior medical personnel that were part of the Board of Directors.

Priorities were then laid out for the needed staff members - the project moved forward to a successful completion. intelligent Disobedience saves the day!

Political Correctness(PC) in the sense that it is regarded as too prescriptive is often seen as stymieing frank debate. Too many rules on how, or what you can or can not say. And it makes it only too easy to harp on a point of language (saying ‘person’ instead of ‘man’ to indicate generic ‘human’), rather than a point of content (i.e. about what the person is, or should be doing).

This is not to say that language is not important, it is. Language is the first way we express our perceptions, and as the saying goes: “perception is reality”. So if the colour of a person is pertaining to race, why not call the race instead of the colour, so ‘Aboriginal’, rather than ‘Black’? This is not being ‘PC’, this is being clear and unambiguous as well as respectful with language.

So Political Correctness fulfils its function much better than it has been given credit for. Language reflects attitudes in culture, be it an organisational culture or in society at large. The use of terms can embed attitudes, thus perpetuating fixed ideas and prevent them from being re-assessed. In this argument ‘fixed embedded terms’ lead to ‘fixed unmovable minds’.

To keep this argument to a corporate environment, a management system that does not contain policies that identify wanted (PC) behaviour, will lead to unwanted (unPC) behaviour.

This then is an argument for PC Corporate Policies, policies that will not only prescribe wanted behaviour, but then model that behaviour by making sure that all relevant processes and procedures are aligned and measured against those policies, with all processes and procedure to be audited against them annually. And from the very tip of the corporate pyramid, to the very bottom. Good examples make for good following.

Contributed by Marjolein Towler