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Powerful pressures lure the most sincere project teams into over-valuing the projects they have been working on a long time. A simple question can alert leaders the numbers are unreliable.

You are the leader of a large organization and in front of you lies a proposal for a new IT project. You normally hate IT projects. They are usually are laden with incomprehensible acronyms & jargon and it is difficult enough trying to understand the problem they are describing let alone the solution. In this case, however, the team has done a smashing job: They have used plain English, all the right experts were involved, and the team achieved consensus for this recommendation. Best of all, the financials projected a credible and respectable 20% Return On Investment.

Now let me tap you on the shoulder and burst your bubble:

When Brains Are Not Enough

Even high intelligence and experience do not instinctively produce the BEST solutions.

Smarts and experience. Who could ask for anything more when assembling a project team?

How then do we explain the 70% to 80% failure rate on acquisitions? Don’t organizations assemble their A-team for acquisitions? Don’t they engage investment bankers– firms that hire the cream of MBAs from the top schools?

Straight From The Horse’s Mouth

What do you really want: great analysis or your first impressions repeated back to you?

If you lived back at in the 1890’s, you would have been extremely impressed with a horse named Clever Hans. This horse correctly answered math and current event questions posed by his master by tapping out the answer with a hoof. He could even read and answer questions written out on cards by people in the audience!

Clever Hans amazed audiences for more than a decade before the truth emerged. No, the owner wasn’t perpetrating a fraud… the master was as shocked as everyone else to learn that Clever Hans didn’t excel in mathematics and world events. Where Clever Hans did excel was in pleasing his owner!

In 1904 it was demonstrated that the horse was looking for cues of approval. After the owner asked a question, Hans tapped his hoof until he perceived approval – perhaps a smile or a raised eyebrow. He had learned that, by stopping when he saw these cues, he was rewarded with an apple or carrot.

It’s not just horses that watch their masters for the “right answer.”

No App For That

We are asking the wrong questions, not calculating the wrong answers.

During an initiative to improve capital project processes I was approached by a small cadre of project managers. They assured me that they understood the goal of improving problem solving and decision-making. Then, out jumped their true reason for our little meeting. “Dave, what we really need is our own spreadsheet template to enter the costs and benefits of our projects. We’ll be able to prepare proposals faster and won’t need finance analysts on our teams.”

This group misunderstood the initiative’s goals entirely. The overhaul wasn’t to make capital approvals easier or faster (although that was a collateral benefit). The overhaul focused on producing better projects. That doesn’t come from spreadsheet templates or black box analysis models. Better projects come from asking the right questions of the right people at the right time.

Hey Leaders! Listening Isn’t Easy, But It’s Essential

I doubt that anyone reading this would disagree with the theme that it’s important to be a good listener to be a good leader. However, in working with leaders at all levels striving to strengthen their performance, listening skills aren’t an issue some of the time; they are an issue nearly 100% of the time.

For too many in leadership roles, either the Symphony of Brilliance (as in, “I know the answer” or, “I’m right”), or, the Symphony of Busyness (“I’ve got so much to do, don’t distract me”) playing in their minds, drowns out attempts at communication emanating from those around them.

We create our own barriers to active listening, and our performance suffers accordingly.

Carnegie’s Secret to Success? Networking.

One of the most impressive figures of the nineteenth century’s Gilded Age was Scottish immigrant Andrew Carnegie. He started off in obscurity and abject poverty, rose to develop the U.S. steel industry, became the wealthiest man in the world when he sold to J.P. Morgan, and went on to become the premier philanthropist of his time.

What was the greatest secret to his success?