Just do the opposite.

Meet my wonderful girl, Connie.?We’ve been together ten years, so to say I love her is an understatement. Put it this way I’ve warned the kids that if she needed a kidney they should emigrate.

Let me tell you a little about this amazing horse, she’s sweet natured, not a bad bone in her body, she loves her work, jumping, cross country, and she’s fast, very fast.

But she’s a total scaredy cat, especially when we go into the riding arena.?I think that when she was young, she got stuck in a bog and she’s terrified of sand. When we go into the schooling area her eyes are out on stalks, she shakes, and we end up fighting with each other. Me straining to hold her steady, her charging round the arena like a steam train with no brakes. By the end of the session, we’re both soaked in sweat and exhausted.

So, I did what I did when I needed to run faster, when I wanted to compete in a physique show, when I wanted to do Hyrox, when we wanted to grow the business, when I needed a new diet… I got a coach.

The first session, nothing changed, the second, it got even worse, by the third we were out of options. So, the coach said, when she wants to bolt, lighten the reins and let her run. What’s the worst that can happen? ‘Hmm, I was thinking, I could get thrown into the fence and get impaled on a post, that would be pretty bad.’ But I had nothing left to try.

We started in walk, moved up to trot and, immediately, could feel her pulling and straining, then we moved up a gear to canter and again, she was off, hurtling round the arena. It took all my willpower to drop the reins and not try to fight with her and pull her back.

Connie is a deep thinker, she wants to communicate and be led, when a horse is listening to you, they put their ears back as if to say ‘what is it you want me to do?? I saw her ears move and she started to calm, the signal I was giving her was that - it’s ok, I’m not stressed, there’s nothing to fear. Horses can feel body language, I think she thought that because I became tense as we sped up that I was terrified of, I don’t know… a lion maybe, so she became scared too and started to run.

Within minutes she slowed to a collected canter, its wonderful to watch, like a three-beat dance, even better to sit in. But more importantly we had a new level of understanding and an incredible connection. I finally understood her needs and we had a result.

On further reflection my year this year has involved lots of deviations from the norm. I was struggling to get to my goal weight for bodybuilding competitions, so I significantly increased my calories to boost my metabolism and lost weight. When I wanted to run faster, I had to initially work on my posture, not my legs as I'd have assumed, and I’ve taken around 9 mins off my 5k time (mind you it wasn’t a hard time to beat). When we wanted to improve our LinkedIn connections, we stopped our ‘persuasive messaging’ and just went with a blank invite which increased our connection rate by around 20%. And when I should have stayed with the bigger firm I got together with my friend and designer and we started our own firm; and so far with my little team, now five of us, I've had had the best year of my career.?

PROJECTS ARE LIKE THIS TO GET A BETTER RESULT YOU MUST THINK DIFFERENTLY AND MOVE AWAY FROM CONVENTIONAL WISDOM.

With projects you must do the counterintuitive thing.

• Hard due dates must be replaced with rough estimates to stop timelines extending due to Parkinson’s law.
• Planning should be done not just by the project manager but with front line teams in the room so that estimates, dependencies and the quality of the content is improved.
• Daily meetings should be primarily concerned not with the nature of the team’s work but with remaining durations of tasks.
• Planning should not be done too far in advance due to the nature of inaccurate prediction.
• Measures should be issued daily reporting showing any over runs early and objectively as opposed to weekly based on subjective estimates.
• Removing blockers needs a formal process not an ad hoc approach.

In the US there’s a famous laboratory. It’s run by Dr John Gottman. By observing couples, they can predict quickly and accurately (to 93%) as to whether they’ll stay together.?He has principles to help, those in need, improve their marriage, he tells couples not to go to therapy because it doesn’t work, again it's against normal advice.

In so many walks of life getting a result is based on moving away from conventional wisdom and swimming against the tide. If you want to know more about how to apply this thinking to improving your projects’ performance, get our late running project guide here.

https://fragilebook.co.uk/projectrecovery

#projectdelivery #descartesconsulting #projectmanagement #projectmanager #deliveringprojects #backedbyresearch #projectplanning #projectperformance #projectrecovery