{"id":1442,"date":"2008-12-26T02:57:53","date_gmt":"2008-12-26T09:57:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/2008\/12\/26\/youve-seen-this-show-before\/"},"modified":"2019-08-07T14:32:44","modified_gmt":"2019-08-07T21:32:44","slug":"youve-seen-this-show-before","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=1442","title":{"rendered":"You’ve Seen This Show Before"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"slide1.JPG\"When you encounter a problem that seems hauntingly familiar, you are not dealing with an ordinary thorn in your side.\u00a0 You are facing a recurring problem.\u00a0 You know the kind of problem I’m talking about . . . the one that, even while you are “solving it”, you have a funny feeling you’ll be seeing it again.\u00a0 Like when you are confronting someone on the team about their repeated lateness on key deliverables, or smoothing over ruffled feathers between people on your team who loath each other.\u00a0 Sure as Christmas, you’re never done with it, dealing with it is just deferred for a while.<\/p>\n

As project managers we see this most vividly in the retrospectives at the end of a project where the usual cast of characters is paraded around as “lessons learned”.\u00a0 Problems that crop up repeatedly require special attention if you want to be truly rid of them rather than just deferring. When you find yourself shoveling the same pile of dirt time and again, it’s usually because of one of three reasons:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 You have been treating a symptom instead of the disease.\u00a0 Sure, maybe it’s faster in the short term, but over multiple quick fixes you end up spending way more time than a proper fix.\u00a0 One example is failing to delegate in order to same time ’cause you can do it faster.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 Your solutions are actually making the problem worse.\u00a0\u00a0 (See “Fixes that Fail” and “Shifting the Burden” archetypes in Peter Senge’s “The Fifth Discipline – The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization”<\/a>)<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0 You are the problem.\u00a0 I wondered why, no matter where I work, I always run into the same kinds of assholes.\u00a0 Well, finally I figured it out.<\/p>\n

Of course there are other explanations for stubborn problems like these, and they deserve a lot more attention, so check out Peter Senge’s book, which plumbs the depths of how to overcome our talent as a species for recreating the same problems over and over again.\u00a0 Don’t slap a band aid on a spurting aorta!\u00a0 It’s bound to bleed you to death eventually.\u00a0 Give recurring problems special attention today or you will be giving them lots more of it in the future.<\/p>\n

Now, time to clean up the pine needles dropping all around the living room and get the house back to normal!\u00a0 Maybe I should buy a fake tree and solve THAT problem once and for all.\u00a0 Enjoy the season!<\/p>\n

– Kimberly Wiefling<\/a>, Author of Scrappy Project Management<\/a>, regularly one of the top 100 project management books in English in the USA, Japan<\/a>, Germany<\/a>, France<\/a>, sometimes Canada<\/a>, but usually NOT in the UK<\/a>, for some reason.\u00a0 Help me solve this problem (except by dropping “scrappy” or using proper English) and I’ll send you a free book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you encounter a problem that seems hauntingly familiar, you are not dealing with an ordinary thorn in your side.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[525,524,500,505,523,527,526],"class_list":["post-1442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leadership","tag-archetype","tag-fifth-discipline","tag-problem","tag-recurring","tag-repeated","tag-retrospective","tag-senge"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1442"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14166,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1442\/revisions\/14166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}