On the way to Volitional Science

Sunday, July 25, 1999 - What happened?

I've been "off the air" for hmmm, well, several months.

What happened?

Did I lose my passion for writing?

Nah.

I just got "blocked."

It all started when I re-read a book called Families - and how to Survive Them by Robin Skynner and John Cleese - yup, that John Cleese. The Monty Python guy.

I went back to re-read the book because I realized a lot of what I know about Systemantics came from the Skynner/Cleese book. There's a branch of psychology called "family systems". And since most of us were raised in families, a lot of our system behavior is influenced by the first system we experience - the family system.

I recommend this book quite highly but there is a downside to reading it- it might dredge up unpleasent memories of family life from when you were a kid, since most - all? - families are dysfunctional to some degree or another.

The upside is that it describes how functional families work and it's good to know how things can work.

The most helpful bit of knowledge that comes to mind that I learned from Families… is about the role of the scapegoat in families. I've seen this exact thing happen in projects and it's something you need to watch out for if you're a project manager. When things are going south in a project you need to be pretty sure you identify who the real problem is and not go with the general chit-chat about who the problem is. That person might be a problem or he/she might merely be serving the role of scapegoat in order to save face for other members of the team.

Another thing I learned about systems from Families… (I think this is where I read it) is that when systems are under attack they close ranks and turn inward. This is important to know if you're not officially part of the old system for finishing a project and you're brought in for some reason to "help out." Remember also from Systemantics that the purpose of a system is never the stated purpose of the system - the system always fills unstated roles, which is why it's hard to get rid of old systems. They get their hooks in everywhere. So if you're asked to "help out" or even "fix" a broken system, you can bet that (1) the members of the system will work hard to shut you out, and (2) they will resist all attempts to convert them into a system that works.

That's why it's always best to sneak up on a system of people. It would be better to call project teams "project systems", actually, to get away from the sports metaphor which is highly flawed.

It's my own view that you will accomplish far more through influence then by fiat. Ordering people around only works once you've gained everyone's respect - and by then there's usually very little reason to order people around. Sometimes at the end of a project you have to make some serious trade-offs to get the project out the door and you may need to invoke some kind of "executive authority" assuming you have some. In general, project managers are never properly empowered.

In my own case, I've recently started to do more and more project management with a client I have. This is entirely in self-defense. I ended up working nights and weekends and holidays because there was no one coordinating the project I got asked to "help out" on. Which isn't to say the team (or should I say "people-system") wasn't making progress.

Left alone, teams generally make progress, especially smaller teams that have an easier time self-organizing.

But once you get past five people (especially for games where it is a multi-disciplinary effort) you can probably double the level of productivity just by ordering the tasks that need to be done.

The single key to successful project management is this: do things in the right order. That's it. Unfortunately, the amount of knowledge of all the bits and pieces, especially for multi-disciplinary efforts like games, that go into a project is huge! And the more of this knowledge you have the better job you can do sorting all the tasks into the right order.

This is pretty much the only thing I focus on right now as far as project management or team management goes - sorting everything that needs to be done into the right order.

Back to being "blocked". Another reason I became "blocked" was because I became a full time employee of a local Seattle game company. Doing so is completely at odds with my goal of keeping my single-person company going by contractual arrangements. This includes contracting out services like art but I also had the goal of only contracting my services in to a place (publisher or other client).

The main reason for only contracting in to a place was that I tend to get caught up emotionally and take on an excessive sense of responsibility for companies I work for as an employee. It's much healthier for me to have the level of indirection provided by contracting. It's a flaw or a feature of my character to get overly empathetic.

On my way out the door at Virgin I asked several people what they thought my biggest flaw was and they all said "too nice!". You might find that hard to believe and some people I had to get after in a serious way might find that hard to believe, but that was the consensus. I do things more by influence than fiat even when I have the executive authority. And that works well up to about 30 people. After 30 people other systems are needed to get stuff finished. Influence, leadership and paying attention only go so far before you need some serious project management.

The group I'm working with now has five or ten people in it depending how you want to count, so my way of working is fine. But it doesn't scale up to groups greater than about 30 in size.

Anyway, another thing blocking me was that I'm a full time employee, which is at odds with what I'd chosen and worked hard to create as a lifestyle, namely the life of a bohemian contractor, and I was having trouble integrating this business of having a real "day job" with the idea of Above the Garage Productions. I still haven't integrated the two fully in my mind.

Above the Garage Productions continues as an entity separate from my current employer. The best I've been able to do is to convert the idea of my current employer back into my more normal idea of a "client". I call them the "FTC" or "Full Time Client." That makes me feel better. The fact that employee-employer relations in nearly all companies is totally messed up is the topic of yet another column. I will also explain why contracting is better and why I compromised my principles and became a "regular employee."

Hopefully this column serves the purpose of getting me "unblocked." I still have lots of ideas to blather about and I really do have a set of regular readers that I like to keep entertained.