Missing the Mark

What happens when you set a Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal (BHAG – much more accurate description than a “stretch” goal – always hated that term…) for yourself and you don’t… quite… make… it? Close, but just not quite the entire distance? Where do you focus? On the distance covered, or on the distance remaining?

At the beginning of this year, I committed to walking with two high school friends in the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. “Sure,” I said, “What it is it, 10K?” Nope. It’s 39.3 miles in one weekend, a marathon (26.2 miles) on Saturday and a half-marathon (13.1 miles) on Sunday. What did I get myself into??

For someone who has fallen down as many times as I have, this was truly a BIG, HAIRY, AUDACIOUS GOAL – a BHAG to top all BHAGs. The only way I could hope to succeed was to train hard and take it more seriously than I ever had. So I did. My first two-mile walk back in January had me flat on the floor, on the phone to my teammate expressing my doubts about the wisdom of this forty-something klutz taking on this challenge.

What did I do to improve my chances of success?
• I walked. A lot. Over 300 miles between January and June. I practiced the skills I needed to get to the finish line.
• I tracked my progress. We found a great website that tracked where we walked, how fast we walked, and how many calories we burned (always a great incentive!) I also had a hard copy of my log on the fridge, and saw it multiple times each day. Seeing those weekly totals climb was inspiring.
• I talked to my teammates often; we commiserated about turned ankles and sore feet and encouraged each other to get out there and walk again tomorrow.
• We competed a little bit within our team – who had done their first 6-mile walk, who had completed their first 10-mile walk, etc.
• I got help from experts for areas way outside my expertise. I worked with a physical therapist to learn how to take care of my flat feet.
• I talked about the event and my participation. The fund raising requirement made this necessary, but it also helped to keep me accountable in my training.

What was the end result of all this preparation?
• A great long weekend with old friends that never would have happened if we hadn’t taken on this challenge. Renewed friendships with women who knew me when we were just girls, getting ready to take on the world. We’re not as smooth and shiny as we were then, but we are so much stronger and wiser than we were then – and we understand what it means to support each other in ways we never would have grasped in high school.
• Strong legs. Seriously, my legs are in the best shape since 1991. I wish a few other body parts were as strong and toned, but I’ll be working on them next…
• Fund raising for a cause – I raised $2,350 towards breast cancer care and research, and the total group of walkers and crew for the event raised over $5.5 million. Each of us on our team far exceeded the minimum fund raising requirement and earned “Fantastic Fundraiser” hats to wear on the walk.
• A deep understanding of what I as an individual and we as a team were able to accomplish with a lot of preparation and hard work, which was far beyond what I expected at the beginning.

So did my team finish all 39.3 miles?

Sort of. I had intermittent trouble throughout my training with my feet; I knew I was pushing it to attempt walking these distances. It was clear to me on Saturday that if I tried to push through and finish the route I would not only hold up my team, I would also not be able to walk on Sunday. So I made the incredibly difficult choice to take the bus from the half-way point on Saturday and leave my teammates to finish the day without me. They finished successfully, but the route was very demanding and ended with five miles of steep San Francisco hills – there was no way could I have finished that route, when I was already struggling at mile 13.

I didn’t feel like a failure, because I knew what I already had done to get to that point, and that I was making the right choice… but I did feel pretty empty as I sat on that bus. It was so hard to watch my friends head out and know that I couldn’t do it with them. I kept up with them through the rest of the day through text messages and cell phone pictures, and at my friend’s request ordered pizza and beer that would arrive after she made it back to the hotel. I had a couple of hours to recover, so I was able to take care of her that evening, which felt good.

We set out Sunday morning with everyone feeling energized, but also sore, tired, and a little beat-up from the demands of Saturday’s route. The volunteers cheered us on and then took care of us throughout the day. My teammate struggled – her knee was aching and her blisters developed blisters. At the rest stops I was able to fill her water bottle or pick up her lunch while she was at the medical tent getting her feet taken care of and her knee wrapped and iced. It was definitely a team effort, but together we crossed the finish line.

So when you aim for but don’t quite hit the mark on a Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal you still end up making progress. Maybe not as much as you hoped, but still progress, and this is good.

What about those smaller, everyday kind of goals & commitments?
What about when you don’t hit the every day goals? I’ve been struggling lately with these smaller commitments & goals – sometimes as small as a phone call to a friend, sometimes as big as a commitment to my team to finish a piece of work by a certain date or time. What happens then? I let my team down, I feel frustrated and like a failure, the list of things to do gets longer… Progress is slowed or stalled. So my new Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal is to figure out how to get out of my rut of procrastination and avoidance.

What am I doing to improve my chances of success?
• Fessing up and asking my teammates to help me stay on track.
• Going back to the basics – something that helped me tremendously a number of years ago was David Allen’s book “Getting Things Done.” So I’m re-reading it and his new book, “Making It All Work.”
• Practicing the skills I need to get to the finish line. While I am re-learning Allen’s incredibly effective method, I’ve gone old school. I make a list each day. I have a big, fat black marker to cross off items that I’ve finished. Anything unfinished goes at the top of the next day’s list in red. A list that has every item completed goes on the fridge to remind me of my success.
• Reminding myself that most of the things on my list are not things that I dislike, or that someone else has imposed on me – it is my choice to stay engaged with my family & friends and to work with a great team to build a new business.
• Really thinking about the consequences of not getting the things on the list done – not just the immediate gratification of not getting off the couch, but the longer impact on my life and this wonderful new adventure we’re on with ICO.

How well is it working? Well, writing this blog entry has been at the top of the list for a week, and it sure feels good to cross it off with my big black marker! I’ll let you know in a couple of weeks if I’m making the kind of progress I’m aiming for, or if I’m still stuck in that rut.

Collabor-NEAH/Collabor-YEAH Bernice Moore-Valdez & Eric Belluche

In the last installment of this two part series on the do’s and don’ts of collaboration, Eric and I lead you down a rocky road of a project with challenges at every turn. Sometimes it is necessary to experience setbacks, as painful as they may be, to understand how we truly want to be treated and how best to treat others. Unfortunately, collaboration took a knock on the chin in this project, but thankfully it got up, dusted itself off, and is ready for the next engagement.

Part 2 of Collabor-YEAH / Collabor-NEAH is a story about collaborative success. The key to this success is based upon a balanced equation of an equal part effort plus a mutual openness toward co-creation, as we developed our presence on the internet. Admittedly, our website is not complete, but we have created a good foundation for it to develop and reflect our values about the importance of collaboration.

To create our website, we had a clear, tangible product and deliverable. ICO had the text; the web designer and our visual content developer partnered to develop the graphics. We kicked off our meeting with our aspirations for we wanted from the website and for our business.

We set up a collaborative space in the Cloud, and shared thoughts, files, graphics, and got right to work. There was openness, mutuality, responsiveness, and we shared values of doing good work that does good in the world.

We started off on a good footing. The proposal was clear. The commitments and deliverables focused on what we wanted to achieve. We talked through timelines to accommodate commitments, and we all gave our best effort. We launched a bit behind schedule, but we were in very close contact with each other throughout the process so we knew where we were and what was needed at every step. We were able to over deliver on the initial presence of our website, including 2 pages, links to our blog, twitter, and email, and a privacy policy--elements that we hadn’t expected to be able to complete in the first iteration.

We had the makings of a beautiful website up in record time. It is just the beginning of our presence on the internet. Our visual content developer purred with contentment because he was loving the partnership with the web designer. The web developer also valued the process. He took our ideas, shaped them, shared them with us at every turn.

The end-result was pleasing to all. More than pleasing, we were thrilled to see our ideas come to life almost like magic. But, it wasn’t magic. Here’s our recipe:

1. Clear goals and outcomes; purpose and values in alignment
2. Agreed upon deliverables and timelines
3. Collaboration established up front; collaboration was a value, a principle and a practice
4. Tools to facilitate collaboration: online space for sharing files and communicating; online meetings at critical junctures with webcams (it is important to see each other)
5. Processes that build collaboration: check-ins, open communications, asking questions with skillful inquiry, sharing ideas freely, inviting feedback, welcoming and accepting it. Listening to each other with a willingness to be influenced.
6. Feedback invited, accepted, valued. We built on each other’s ideas in a creative process.
7. Shared leadership; no one was boss; everyone’s ideas and opinions valued. Everyone did their own piece of work, met their commitments, and communicated effectively with the rest of the team.

So why did this project work so well and the other didn’t? Well, there were some mitigating factors that exasperated the proposal process for GPM project. There were also more people involved with and effected by the GPM project. Regardless of the size of the project, the underlying reason for success can be contributed to an overall willingness, openness, and commitment to working together with shared leadership. Without that fundamental component ideas don’t get conveyed, deadlines don’t get met and projects don’t come to fruition.

Collabor-NEAH/Collabor-YEAH Bernice Moore-Valdez & Eric Belluche

As an organization who’s purpose is to enable collaboration across distance and difference, you would think all our interactions would exemplify the values of open communication, clear understandings, and cooperation. Even with the best intentions, effective collaboration cannot be achieved without struggling through hard times and learning from mistakes.

In this two part blog series, Eric and I are contrasting two experiences; one that worked beautifully and another that failed miserably. By providing you insights into both ends of this collaborative spectrum, hopefully we’ll illuminate some of the do’s and don’ts of this invaluable process.

Here’s Part 1 of Collabor-NEAH / Collabor-YEAH; A slap in the face vs. a pat on the back--hypothetically speaking of course!

The project that went awry was a proposal to develop global project management (GPM) capability for an international team with project managers in Sweden, Germany, Canada, the US, Korea, and China. I was brought in by a consultant and colleague to work with the leadership team. Because I had worked with the international team several times and had coached many of the executive team, I had gained a a strong working relationship with the executives and a basic understanding of what was needed.

Problem # 1. Communication with my consulting colleague was fraught with challenges. He kept telling me, “I want you to lead this project,” while insisting that all communications with the client funnel through him. This limited free flowing communications and collaboration. While developing the proposal, I was unable to talk or communicate directly with the director of the international team to clarify his needs and expectations. Often it would take 2-3 weeks to get a response to emails and revisions to the proposal. It would also take weeks to schedule a conversation and often schedules were not honored.

I partnered with a project management expert in the US to create a proposal that met the client’s needs to the best of our understanding. That expert had a long-term relationship with a project management training and consulting group, (I’ll call them PMPlus), and they had the ability to provide tools, templates, training materials, and consultation around the globe, so we brought them into the equation.

Problem # 2. Unfortunately, PMPlus did not share our values of openness or have a similar commitment to collaboration. Ideas from the expert project manager were not welcomed. The project management expert and I worked hard to break through PMPlus’ roadblocks with our own close collaboration and tag-team insistence on what we felt would be best for the global team. We pushed in concert. PMPlus finally listened and reshaped their proposal.

Problem # 3. The proposal I submitted with PMPlus was seen as too expensive, which was a valid concern. Unfortunately, rather than working together to reshape it, my colleague leveraged my background analysis and framework to create an alternate proposal without my knowledge. He made changes in finances, scope, and resources directly with PMPlus, brought in a project management group in China, and in essence reshaped the project.

When I finally had the chance to review the revised proposal with new players, scope, and financial benefits for my colleague, I was dumbfounded. I was concerned that this new direction would create great expense for the client without developing the company’s ability to manage a global project in real time. The focus of this new proposal provided classroom training for primarily one region, China, and I was afraid that this would exacerbate cross-cultural difficulties the team was already experiencing, undermining their critical need to work as a unified global project management team.

After additional misunderstandings, missed communications, and lack of collaboration, I walked away from the project.

What went wrong?

1. Autocratic leadership; decision making structures that were not open to shared leadership
2. Unclear goals and outcomes based on the client’s perspective and inability to clarify them
3. Restricted access and limited communication with key stakeholders
4. Delays and gaps in communications. Slow responses to critical communications.
5. Lack of openness to ideas and feedback. Often ideas or feedback were received with resistance or rejection
6. Lack of demonstrated respect for the value individuals brought to the project
7. No use of collaborative tools, practices, or processes. In fact, collaboration was not a shared value or practice

While a long read, this post has some critical lessons about ineffective collaboration. Stay tuned for next installment, when Eric and I share a much more positive example of the power of collaboration.