Mentors

I was talking with someone the other day about having and getting mentors. I think mentors are crucial in any job or workplace.

Dictionary.com defines mentor as "a wise and trusted guide and advisor." I define a mentor as someone who will share their knowledge and experience with you and help you figure out what's important and what you just have to let go. I suppose a friend could be a mentor but you really need someone who will be blunt and honest even if that might hurt your feelings. Mentors need to tell you the truth.

My new workplace (I'll be new there for a couple of years) has a formal mentoring program that includes group, email and face-to-face mentoring. Unfortunately for me, it's closed to employees at my job level this year because they enrolled a bunch of people at my level last year.

So I have to find a mentor the good old fashioned way--watch for someone who knows what they're talking about and has the time and inclination to sit down with me when I need it and just talk things over.

At Not Big Blue I eventually discovered a great mentor. He was an expert at handling the incompetent middle managers so he could get things done. I would storm into his office, mad as hell about something the management was doing and he would chuckle, hear me out (so I calmed down), and help me analyze the situation and devise a counter strategy. He helped me figure out how to sway my organization's managers into establishing a relationship with the U which cost the company thousands of dollars but was great for our group and the U students.

My first manager at Widgets was the closest thing I had to a mentor there. I think she became more of a mentor after she left when I would email complaints and she would tell me to cut out the whining and get moving. She was always telling me to get certified as a project manager and I thought it was weird--big mistake since she would have helped me when she was my manager. When I decided to leave Widgets I emailed her my resume and she replied with something like "NO. Here's some examples of what you should say and here's a job description with the terms you need to use..." It helped me quite a bit.

I have a couple of people that may work as mentors for me now. One is young but with a lot of company experience and the ability to explain anything and to help me form plans to deal with "situations." The other is a senior project manager who has already given me some stern direction to get more aggressive about my role-I'm working on it.

My manager also mentors me. Our weekly one-on-one meeting usually involves me asking questions about some company group/practice I really don't understand, or, like today, asking advice about what to do in a specific situation. He's always helpful and practical. I feel like I can take any problem to him but when you talk to your manager there's always that worry that you'll ask a question that'll make your manager say "You did WHAT?"

So, I'll keep looking for help, advice and guidance from wherever I can get it.

Me Bitter?

This comment was posted at the end of my Olympics Part III entry.

"Bitterness can be exhausting." This was in reference to me saying I was exhausted by the time I wrote and edited that long entry.

Interesting. Rereading the entry I don't see any bitterness. In fact I really don't ever feel bitter about anything. Angry, definitely, and I've blogged about that. At this point I have only good feelings toward the company (I'm a shareholder after all) and almost everyone that works there.

Yeah, I'm still angry at that bitter, sarcastic guy that forced me out of the company but I try to think of him as little as possible even though I know he thinks about me all the time--why else would he read my blog everyday?

I think what I wrote in the Olympics entries is as accurate as any journalistic report would be since I don't believe in "objective journalism." I'd love to hear your responses. (Bitter, sarcastic comments aren't welcome.)

I've been slowly but surely going through an online project management training class. There are ten modules, each about some aspect of the pm process. Each module is broken down into two or three dozen two-minute content points that each contain a few screens of lists or important points.

There's a picture on each screen--pictures of people (models) that look really busy and happy. Sometimes they are in a group looking at a computer monitor or taking seriously but most of the time it's one person acting like they are doing something. Really, what can you show people doing that goes with project management? I've read hundreds of these screens by now and the pictures repeat over and over. I might start tallying them to see if the picture of the woman holding a Blackberry-like thing is used more than the picture of the happy meeting of young men and women of various nationalities.

There is a narrator who happily explains everything. "Scope management" he cheerfully tells me "is the sum of the products, services, and results to be provided as a project." I can just see this guy finishing up the hours and hours of taping this course and either bursting into tears or heading to the bar to try to forget what he does for a living. Maybe he was sedated the whole time.

(Once, when I lived in a foreign country for a time, I did English language-learning tapes as part of my job. It sounds like that would be interesting but it was so incredibly boring to read these really simple phrases into the boombox (third-world country). The funniest part was when my hosts corrected my English--I would just roll my eyes and read it the way they wanted. The sessions could take hours.)

Is my online class interesting? Welllll, I am learning stuff. I've come across business terms I've heard before but didn't understand and I'm learning about things like estimating methods that are relatively interesting. But it's all just a step on the way to getting my certification.

The real downside is that my method of typing notes fast while I listen to the happy narrator has inflamed my usually dormant carpal tunnel syndrome. That damn repetitive-motion assembly line job from decades ago can still come back to haunt me.

**Geek alert**Today, I finished my training sessions for the new XML-based content system. It's not a content management system, it's a repository that huge amounts of data can be loaded into and searched very efficiently. They also have an interesting way of externalizing relationships. It all sounds relatively simple but the problem seems to be reconciling the features of all the applications that want to display and search the data with the data repository services. I think the developers in the audience signed up for the hands-on class but all of us are going to get read-only access to the data GUI where you can see what they were talking about in the class.

I've always claimed (to myself and others) that one of my greatest skills was the ability to pull the important information about a project --the information I needed to figure out what to do next--out of a conversation or meeting. I did that partly by observing what other people thought was important and partly based on whatever experience I had on the topic. While taking the next step I would often find an issue that I missed but I would cover that through more conversations or meetings.

I think that strategy can be effective in companies like Widgets where there were some superior people in the meetings and my projects were basically repetitive, but it's not really a reliable, repeatable method.

Using what I've learned in my classes at Lawyer's R Us and because of the requirements of a particularly insistent senior project manager, I'm learning to be more active in the project process. For example, I'm working on
- creating goals for meetings,
- anticipating what issues might come up in meetings and which can/should be deferred,
- paying VERY close attention to what's going so I can steer the discussion toward the meeting goals or sum up why we can't reach those goals.

Because I'm dealing with all new people and products, I can't rely on my old method. It's hard to change because I'm not a very methodical, detail-oriented person and on the Myer's Briggs scale, I'm barely an extravert.

On the positive side, I have a supportive manager, friendly and very capable co-workers who want my leadership, and a long enough time frame to do the work I need to do. I've been given every chance to succeed so it's entirely up to me to just do it.

Learning and changing. We never stop doing it.

Olympics Part Three

First, I was kidding about going back to Widgets. I just wanted to see who was reading this. Thanks for your emails!

Second, I'm under a lot of pressure to post part three of the Olympics saga/tragedy/epic. Okay, a few people keep asking when I'm going to do it. The more I thought about it, the more I felt like I didn't know enough to comment since I was long gone from the place and only followed the action through the opinions of a couple dozen people. But hey, this is the blogosphere and anyone with a keyboard can say whatever they want, so here goes....

I left off with this statement.

"Unfortunately, at this point The Network Who Shall Not Be Named (NWSNBN) obviously decided that it might be fun to make a little company in Minnesota squirm or maybe writhe would be a better word. Okay, it probably wasn't a malicious conspiracy by The Network, but it was a perfect storm of several new half-thought-out projects. The Network said all these projects must launch in December--the same time as the Olympics site!"

Widgets and maybe the people at the NWSNBN were in a tight spot. Widgets was in the middle of a major debt restructuring and it wasn't a good time to annoy a very big (and potentially even bigger) service customer. The NWSNBN had it's own internal politics (or so the rumors said) that were driving their people to drive Widgets people into the ground. Everyone was, perhaps a bit desperate.

So, it's fall 2005. The web site for the Five Ring Circus is barely started, major undefined projects with short timelines are committed to, and it was hard to hire people who could come in and help in the short time frames since there is so much proprietary software to learn about before you can code anything. The company correctly began to give raises to some (but not all) of the vastly underpaid people. Bonus money was promised if "everything goes okay." I heard that management people even wandered around saying nice things.

In other words, whoever was in the building had to do all the work and quickly. If we had made a plan in 2004 when we finished the last Five Ring Circus, we would have started hiring much earlier and we would have had documentation of how far behind we were.

The constant at Widgets is the willingness of the majority of workers to do whatever has to be done, whether it is the launch of a website, incorporating a new technology, or just slogging out a massive amount of sales work. We got the work done even when there wasn't enough time or people or we were told to do something and then, halfway through, were told to stop and do it a different way. I think I've mentioned that there was little or no recognition or reward for this incredible work ethic.

The new projects for the NWSNBN turned out to be worse than anyone expected. The site concerning weather was poorly conceived and designed and another vendor on the project just plain failed to do what they promised. The new design for other sites was...poorly conceived and designed and the people in the basement had a big mess dumped on them and were told to get it done fast. Widgets people worked very hard to try to cover for the failures of others, but the results suffered from the fact that all the web knowledge of the Widgets basement types was ignored because the customer is always mostly right.

The Five Ring Circus site moved ahead slowly, a massive, intricately designed package of rotating and updating information that needed dozens of tricky methods written to make it work. That the project moved at all was due to an incredible number of hours of work being put in by the programmers and tech staff and people doing sales. I think some people worked every day for weeks and a lot of those days were ten to twelve hours long. Project management to try to track the thousands of pieces of work was only added near the end.

Did the Five Ring Circus site launch on time? Did the results display on the page within seconds of each athlete finishing? Did the sales placements satisfy the customers?

Yes, of course. Sure there are small problems and some of the requested googaws weren't exactly finished but overall the site was a huge success with impressive page views since it was actually advertised this time. Bonuses were apparently paid out and there is going to be an event in another month to thank everyone. (Hmmm, why not do a small event immediately after and then...no, never mind.)

During the Olympics, did I wish I was sliding in there every morning at 6 to eat Egg Bake and then put in my twelve hour day? I did miss watching the cable broadcasts of the live sports (I don't have cable at home) but I really only wanted to watch Curling anyway. Otherwise I was happy to not be there.

I salute the Widgets workers for their Five Ring Circus success! You should be proud of your accomplishments. You deserve better - go find a job at a company that is organized, consistently appreciative, and that will train you for your next job.

I have to stop now, I'm exhausted.

Wow! I hear my old job at Widgets will shortly be available. I'm going to call some HR and management people on Monday to see how the job is going to be posted. It's worth some phone calls. I know I quit but I've learned a lot since October and I feel like I could really come into that challenge with a new attitude. Really interesting.

I got that intel from a Widgeteer that came to the cruise ship (that person compared it to a mall) for lunch on Friday. It's so nice to see my Widget friends!

More Training

I went to a brown bag session today about CMMI. For those of you that aren't development geeks, it's the organizational maturity model that Carnegie Mellon University developed. The presenter was a director of the tech organization that is trying to move his organization to the second level, still immature but showing definite signs of progress. He was interesting and funny.

The maturity levels relate to how organizations use projects to organize their work and how they standardize those projects. The interesting thing about CMMI is that it doesn't tell an organization what to do, just helps them understand what they're doing and what they could start doing that would help save time and money and increase quality.

After it ended I walked up and told him I worked on ISO 9001 at Not Big Blue and wondered how it related to CMMI. He looked at me and said "Are you looking for a job?" I had no idea what to say in response. "Uh, no....not right now." Then he turned to talk to the organizer of the event. I still don't know if he was serious.

In the next two weeks I have four half days of training about the XML repository that is the basis of the company's future infrastructure. The training is in the small auditorium because there's so much demand so it won't be personal but there are good training materials.

I've managed to get through one module on my online project management course. I should be able to do at least one more tomorrow, maybe two.

I also have a half-day class coming up--intermediate Lawyers.com. I'm thinking about signing up for a class on negotiation for the next time it comes around.

I had soccer tonight and I'm tired so I'm going to keep this short. (We got hammered although I thought we played okay.)

First, I want to say that I'm ready to finish my Olympic trilogy but it'll take a while to write it. I'm getting the final results of the experience from various people now.

I've been using some of my vacation time, visiting Chicago. That was so nice after losing a big chunk of my vacation every year at Widgets because I was stupid enough to be conscientious and not use it and the company was.....well, they took everything over forty hours away even if they asked me to keep working to finish a project.

Speaking of that, my projects are maybe going to change. More on that tomorrow.

I spent most of the night volunteering for a candidate for Governor. You know, those calls you get at dinner time when someone reads a script to you and even if you're sympathetic you want to hang up? That's what I was doing. People were, in fact, almost all very friendly and I had several nice conversations. In fact I talked to almost twenty people in eighty calls which is a pretty good success rate.

I said I would help the campaign with "internet stuff" too. I did the web stuff for a valiant but unsuccessful campaign five years ago and learned a lot.

I started my online course on project management. I quickly found myself spacing out so I decided to take notes as I went along, especially since I think I have to pass the test to pass the course. Taking notes makes it go slower but maybe I'll learn something.

I also was part of a one hour training on one of the core systems that our primary product uses. People in my group have been very successful lately in convincing members of other groups to do sessions explaining various important products.

My projects are sloooowing down. I've cancelled my quality meetings this week for all except one of them because we had no release dates and no clear direction. The project that's rushing ahead toward release has to have all new dates calculated and we can't do any test planning until then.

When it's slow I set up one-on-one and small group meetings where I can talk to different people on the project about what they're doing so I can understand things better. I did one meeting today and learned quite a bit about the plans of the principal development group.

At lunchtime I went to the monthy Project Manager's Forum. The first one I went to was intimidating and boring but they've changed the format to be much friendlier and actually useful

The session was about project startup. We did introductions, one of the session leaders presented some sample topics for a startup meeting, then we broke up into small groups to talk about what we think a startup meeting is and what you should do in one.

It was a good discussion. We shared stories of misunderstanding, lack of information, and group politics and talked about what we would LIKE to happen when you start a project, knowing it might never happen. We talked about what "startup meeting" actually means--the startup meeting when you only know generally what has to be done but not much more or the startup meeting when all the right people come and talk in detail about what they're going to do. The group got back together after twenty minutes and shared our small group discussions. The organizers will write up the discussions and send them out to everyone. The session was short enough that I had time to eat lunch before my next meeting!

I also got the go ahead to sign up for the PMI project management class that I need for certification. I had to fill out a training request form with a rationale (that I carefully worded) for the "external" training. I asked my manager if the rationale was okay and he said "Oh, that's just a formality. It'll be approved. Just sign up." I signed up online at the end of the day but I haven't gotten the signon information yet and it's been hours!