How a Taking a Road Trip to Yellowstone National Park While Simultaneously Attending Formal Project Management Classes Propelled Me for Our New Spacious Future
Written 9-7-2020
You noticed, didn’t you?
We have a new normal. Everywhere you look, we all are virtual now. We talk more often on the phone than we get together anymore. Lately, we see each other on screens more than we ever did before. There seems to be more and more google docs demanding our attention, and not all our co-workers are around us anymore.
It is funny how each year summer seems to start at different times. This year, in January, my darling wife and I had dashed to Disneyland for some family birthday festivities while we simultaneously talked about our summer plans. Then, in mid-March, business commerce came to a full dead stop. In April and May, business limped along inside this new evolving virtual normal. Finally, in June, I needed to make a couple of moves. Of course, I really was not interested in staying still so I decided to go places this summer, marvelous places, energetic places, majestic places. For some of these places I needed to drive there. For many others though, I just needed to listen, read, and write on my computer.
I saw and felt this new virtual normal all around me changing each and every week during this Great 2020 Coronavirus Business Unraveling.
Business Passport Renewal
I felt I needed to update my thinking on what I was doing. How would I accomplish more, anymore? Where would I fit in? Suddenly, I craved a formal understanding about the powerful forces holding businesses together. I wanted to fully learn about the generation, documentation, monitoring, and resolving major projects so I could adapt and perform more intelligently both as a vendor or a player on any project in this fluid, suddenly unattached new normal.
Everyone often says, ‘Think Outside the Box.’ However, for me, to better understand my time outside the box I wanted to better understand every little thing that was inside the project management box. Our little neighborhood/world-wide coronavirus was shifting the gravitational forces on how business needed to communicate with each other, and how new projects/products/services would be authorized, sourced, verified, documented, and completed.
So, at the end of May, I made the First Move of Summer – I signed up for a 12-week series of online Project Managements Classes (Introduction to Project Management, Project Management Processes, Project Management Knowledge Areas) taught by The Learning Resources Network (LERN), https://lern.org/. The Learning Resources Network (LERN) is the world’s largest association in continuing education and lifelong learning, offering information and consulting expertise to providers of continuing education and customized training.
This First Move of Summer, the Project Management Classes, had barely started in June when my wife and I made the Second Move of Summer – We decided to drive over to Yellowstone National Park for a week’s needed ‘safe vacation.’ Although my wife Sharon had been there as a teenager with her family, I had never been there before. Airplanes were out, auto road trips were in!
Suddenly, we were off to both Yellowstone National Park, and the Grand Tetons National Park. Yellowstone National Park was the first national park in the U.S. and is also widely held to be the first national park in the world. It was established by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872.
Box Appreciation 101 – What’s Holding Us All Together?
As we drove around both national parks it occurred to me to stop, and shout “We’re inside two enormous boxes! Vacations are boxes! They are boundaries! We all like to pick our boundaries in what foods we eat, what books we read, what shows we attend, what politicians we follow, and more. Our vacations were just another boundary we assigned ourselves.
In years past, my wife and I had travelled to Mexico a couple of times, Canada three times, and Europe five times already. Like many others we were simply exploring different places, but unbeknownst to ourselves, we were choosing new boundaries, new boxes to explore. Each year, we picked what locations/boxes we wanted to visit! They could be family hangouts upstate, or clear across country, or overseas, or around the world! If we go somewhere new, we were thinking that our newest vacation is ‘outside the box’ but rather it is only ‘outside our previous box.’ After returning, that latest vacation is now ‘inside our box’ with the rest of us!”
There is one theory about the ultimate destination for our universe. Wikipedia documents it nicely as the Big Freeze – Observations suggest that the expansion of the universe will continue forever. If so, then a popular theory is that the universe will cool as it expands, eventually becoming too cold to sustain life. For this reason, this future scenario once popularly called “Heat Death” is now known as the “Big Chill” or “Big Freeze”
However, Wikipedia also mentions Dark Matter. Dark Matter is a form of matter thought to account for approximately 85% of the matter in the universe. Primary evidence for dark matter comes from calculations showing that many galaxies would fly apart, or that they would not have formed or would not move as they do, if they did not contain a large amount of unseen matter.
This summer showed me the power of the box! What are the forces inside a natural preserve that maintains its longevity? What were those organized forces of project management that elevates a company’s performance?
We drove around a lot inside Yellowstone National Park, and Grand Tetons National Park, and enjoyed every minute of it. Since we live and work in the city so much of the year seeing buildings, bridges, media, people, museums, retail – many of the forces that hold together a metropolis. Having time to see some of the of 3,468.4 square miles of lakes, canyons, rivers, and mountain ranges of Yellowstone National Park plus seeing and feeling the heat of half of the world’s geysers and hydrothermal features gave us an intimate view of the robust forces that hold together nature.
Additionally, taking these formal project management classes slowly illuminated for me multiple forces that held businesses together so they could be fully functional. Without these formidable project management forces in place projects would not get started, would not be able to adjust themselves, nor would they ever end favorably.
These powerful project management forces come with a multitude of acronyms such as:
- AC actual cost
- CPM critical path method
- EMV expected monetary value
- EVM earned value management
- LOE level of effort
- RBS risk breakdown structure
- SOW statement of work
- WBS work breakdown structure
These project management forces were documented with multiple graceful project document types such as:
- 7QC Tools
- Business Case
- Communications Management Plan
- Decision Tree Diagram
- Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)
- Charters, Proposals, Schedules, Calendars
- Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
Dancing Along with Project Management
So, basically, it took a world-wide pandemic for me to fully explore and fully appreciate all these powerful forces of project management.
In the past, I think, my approach to project management was greatly influenced by me taking a ballroom dancing class in college. In that class, I learned that my dancing partner was occasionally looking for direction but also wanted the space and freedom for their expression. Consequently, in all my subsequent projects I would use that approach to provide subtle assistance, direction for the next move, positive feedback, and reinforcement on timing. I do not think I spent much time calculating risk either while dancing or my group projects, and if I think about that lack of risk evaluation, it would probably be in response to how my mother always looked at the world. Everyone in our family said she was the creative worrier. She did all the heavy lifting on risk analysis so the rest of us just moved along. If something odd occurred, we would deal with it later, but we would not worry about it.
We all get to decide what coloring pages we want to fill in each summer. Many times, it is the most active, most colorful time of the year! Me, I am attracted to a good story. Learning and seeing the story of Yellowstone National Park up close and personal will stick with me for years. Learning about all the sophisticated story telling skills needed for effective project management will stick with me for years too.
Many educators or trainers use this classic approach to share their information:
- I’m going to tell you what I’m going to tell you
- I’m going to tell you
- I’m going to tell you what I told you
I enjoyed this summer’s project management classes because they systematically illuminated all the details to organizing and running successful projects. It now seems to me that Project Managers use a similar approach used by educators/trainers:
- I’m going to tell you what the project will be
- I’m going to provide timely updates during the project
- I’m going to tell you how the project ended
One week’s classes talked about Acquiring Project Team and Develop Project Team.
During that week’s classes, I was reminded of an interview I read about James Garner, the actor who played the detective James Rockford on the Rockford Files TV program. He mentioned that while acting in earlier TV programs he noted the technicians around him that were good at their craft. They could have been good sound technicians or stunt directors, or whatever. When he became part of the team helping to produce the Rockford Files TV program, he made a point to hire those talented craftspeople he saw on earlier programs/projects.
As a project manager, I think acquiring your project team, budget, resources, is critical to the project’s success. It is not unlike the way a logical argument often works. If you agree to certain major tenants before the logical argument begins you may have already lost the argument. If you start the project understaffed, underfunded, under authorized, you may not be happy with the resulting project.
As the saying goes, ‘You get what you can afford.’ If you cannot afford the absolute best project team, then developing your project team becomes even more critical. Reading about the Tuckman Model, the forming–storming–norming–performing model of group development will now stick with me too!
Good, Better, Best
With my story-telling background in marketing, sales, and customer service, I often look at everything as being possibly GOOD, BETTER, or BEST. Is my company leading in market share? What is the competition doing? Are their products, services, or promotions better than ours?
Visiting both Yellowstone National, and Grand Tetons National Parks were the BEST. Seeing and taking photos of the vitality of nature, then visiting the Western Art Galleries of Jackson, WY was, at times, seductive, heroic, and nostalgic. Generally, we never see this art in the city of decisive, well-lit moments of cowboys & native Americans, nature, animals, and so many landscapes.
Photographers look at these paintings and say, “You can place that animal right where you want. You don’t have to wait for that great light, or animal to arrive!”
Painters respond, “All you have to do is go outside and take pictures. If you don’t like them, then go outside, and take more pictures.”
Perhaps, the biggest reward of travel is viewing different art. The artist’s argument rages on. If you do not travel enough, you’ll miss their full discussion.
The Project Management classes were the BEST. I wanted a full explanation about the possible nuances of project management, and direction for some good references that I could refer to in the future. It turns out I have the reference now myself when I purchased the PMBOK Guide, the Project Management Book of Knowledge during the second class.
Fully exploring all the mighty forces holding projects together including project charters, analyzing risk, verifying resources, managing change, and celebrating results has offered me some real tools to better evaluate, document, and analyze potential risks to all my upcoming projects.
There are mighty once-in-a-lifetime forces currently pulling the business community apart. Learning how to tap into binding project management forces has changed my future and elevated this summer tremendously even while we were all told repeatedly throughout the summer to stay put. It turns out I went to wonderful places safely, and I would recommend that you have time to go there too!
Epilogue
I should mention that I was imprinted at a young age to always be writing about my Summer Vacations. I seem to recall that it was a rather popular assignment over the years, and this summer was no different. Nonetheless, in this boxed-in coronavirus summer I understand risk better. I understand now why some people choose their vacation destinations differently depending on their acceptance of risk. What boxes do they want to explore, or what boxes do they not want to leave? I can anticipate risk better. I can document inside/outside responses. I can budget for it better. Still, I do not think I will ever be the creative worrier that my mother was able to accomplish but I am better prepared now for this spacious new future in front of us all.
Maybe, just maybe, I will be a better dancer now too since I have been known to fall down on the dance floor.
Cache of Communiqués 