Program Tactics #005 - Smoke and Mirrors

"You cannot wait for the smoke to clear: once you can see things clearly it is already too late.”

— Michael Lewis

Estimated reading time: 3.5 mins

​
​Clear the smoke and break the mirrors.

If there's anyone in the organization that can destroy ambiguity, it's you (the program manager).

Destroying ambiguity is a special skill you can bring to any organization-- one perfectly suited for a program manager. This is because we have to work with so many people and each person has their own perspective of anything the org is doing.

At this great intersection, we have the benefit of having everyone else's perspective, and we can synthesize to lead everyone to a common goal.

Expectations of You

Remember the last time you just had a project charter, everything was straightforward and executed like no tomorrow? Yeah those are rare the longer you're in this role. Great starter programs, but not the kind of stuff that get's you progressing in seniority.

When it comes to your career, you will be expected to deal with an ever increasing amount of ambiguity as you progress in experience and seniority. Learning to get comfortable with this is how you advance.

The more defined and easy something is to execute, the more it can be outsourced, offshored, or delegated to someone else.

Ambiguous assignments are the opportunity.

The Tactic

Anytime you receive an ambiguous assignment, look at it as a career enhancing opportunity. I like to use a lightweight scientific method approach to get to the bottom of it.

1. Research: ingest all the info and connect with the key people to get the essence of the assignment
2. Form a hypothesis: formulate your take on what it appears we should be doing
3. Test the hypothesis: start sharing your hypothesis with more stakeholders until you develop a complete approach
4. Analyze: start getting the requirements, dependencies, costs, resourcing, etc involved.
5. Align: on goals - put it all together into the program plan

Example

I once had a program to increase international revenue for the organization. One of those "where do I start?" problems.

1. Research: let's determine which products, how much revenue, which countries, and if there are any priorities?
2. Hypothesis: 2 newer products, by 10% at year's end, in France, Germany, and Japan, focusing on new market.
3. Test Hypothesis: we determined the need to create a business entity, increase sales hiring, and start a customer support division that speaks the language.
4. Analyze: we discovered we needed 2 quarters to complete the business entity, have our first new hires start, the website and sales materials completed, and a fully on-ramped customer support division and projected we'd hit 7% by EOY.
5. Align: present plan and goals to all interested parties, gain buy-in, and start executing.

Just to note: I had to go back to my hypothesis to tweak the program several times (this is normal).

While this is a simple and short example, the main point to drill here is to take a systematic approach to destroy ambiguity. Whatever method you choose, it's easy to get lost in overwhelm and having a system helps solve that.

Tips

1. Learn to act without knowing all of the details - there's a tendency to freeze, this is a sign to keep moving-- more 1:1's, reading, reviews, asking mentors. Keep going.
2. Confidently take risks - not having all the information is risky, but not acting with enough information will hold you back. Aim for "enough" information and then move with flexibility.
3. Hold strong opinions loosely - as you discover stuff about your program, you'll likely need to pivot your beliefs about what the true nature of your assignment is.
4. Continue to communicate - share updates with key people as you learn more information, oftentimes they will have additional context or clarification to add now that you've accumulated more information.

Once you've solved the problem, be sure to celebrate the success with the organization. You'll develop a reputation as someone who can solve anything.

Guess who they'll ask to do the next big thing?

You.

Matt McDannel

Connect with me: LinkedIn | email | programtactics.io​

​