Abstract
What can the exceptional performances of a tiny school and indigenous Maori community in the backblocks of New Zealand teach us about real world organizational project management? – Step outside the square and into their rainforest to find out.
An organisation that confines itself to linear analytical processes to define and manage the portfolio of projects it needs to achieve its vision, can struggle in the real environment of complexity, apparent chaos, interconnectedness, intense competition, change, uncertainty and ambiguity. Too often we try to micro manage at levels of detail far below the ambient noise levels of our world.
Tipu Ake is a leadership model that can help organisations, teams and individuals surf in the turbulence and manage above its noise levels. It spans almost all A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) / OPM3™ knowledge areas, surrounding our conventional project processes with very proactive organisational, project team and individual leadership behaviours that promote communication, teamwork, growth and innovation. It helps extend our traditional project risk management thinking through zero into the positive area of opportunity.
Introduction
In this presentation we will:
- Look from a quite different cultural perspective at those organisms we call projects and how we can use them to make a new future happen. This case study will raise some questions about what leadership really is and suggest ways you as a professional Project Manager could grow your project team's effectiveness.
- Use the Tipu Ake lifecycle to identify those project, leadership, team and organizational behaviors that are detrimental to performance and know how to replace them with much more proactive team empowering actions that encourage innovation (Resources available at www.tipuake.org.nz).
- Compliment our conventional linear PM processes with some more organic and agile tools that allow organizations to clearly describe and communicate their vision, then, by looking backwards get commitment to and lead a program of projects that will deliver real customer outcomes.
Lessons from the rainforest
In 1999 the presenter and other management lecturers from the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) discovered that the tiny Te Whaiti School in a rainforest in the backblocks of New Zealand had self transformed itself in a few short years from an educational disaster to the top of its class.
That sparked an active research project to find out how they did it and to see if their model could be applied to projects in other mainstream organizations. They had none of the process tools of the PMBOK ® Guide or OPM3, instead they told us “We just did things the best way we know how”.
We applied SEI Capability Maturity Model thinking and found them operating off the scale – they seemed to add new levels above and below the process level thinking of conventional organizations. Theirs is an oral culture, so in their organization almost everything is told in stories.
We asked them if we could help them documents their secrets to share with others. They suggested we forget all the flowcharts, boxes and arrows and draw it as a tree growing from a seed in the rainforest, continually interacting with all the other species in its environment.
- They told us about the pests, those negative behaviors that turn us downward and block growth if we do not name and control them.
- They reminded us about the recyclers that turned dead material into compost, finding opportunity even in adversity and death.
- They warned us about the poisons, those enemies within our own minds that sap the courage we need to germinate anything new.
- They sang the praises of the birds, the entrepreneurs of the forest, that pollinate and spread the seeds of new ideas
- They told us about the sun, that external energy and experience that illuminates our blindspots and questions our assumptions.
They recognize that life is a cyclic, organic and highly interconnected complex system and seem to have found some simple ways of working with it. They concentrate on behaviors: facing the issues, sharing leadership, exceptional teamwork, effective processes, sensing what is happening around them and exploiting their collective wisdom. Most importantly all agreed on the outcomes they sought; “Giving our children the choice to be anything they want in life”.
Together we documented the intuitive model that had driven their organization in a form more understandable and applicable in mainstream organizations. We trialed and developed our prototype it as we went on Project Management Workshops at The Auckland University of Technology. http://www.aut.ac.nz and elsewhere.
Tipu Ake – An Organic Leadership Model for Innovative Organizations (Exhibit 1)
Tipu Ake ki te Ora - growing from within ever upwards towards wellbeing is the name they gave it . That tiny word “Ora” embodies the wholistic Maori concept of Wellbeing; a high state of balance with the earth and all its richness that accounts for the past, present and the future. (Perhaps the balanced scorecard and triple bottom line business speak is a first step in this direction with a long way to go)
Exhibit 1
The ground level we call the undercurrents, that exciting place of turmoil and apparent chaos where energy abounds to sustain the germination of new ideas.
It takes courage to go down into the undercurrents and sometimes even more to grow a new idea out of it. Courageous leadership that champions a change attracts a team around it like a magnet, provided they all can agree on the second phase – a common vision of the outcomes sought.
Tipu Ake encourages our team to grow to operate at the higher collective sensing and wisdom levels, above the process level with all its analytical and often contradictory Key Performance Indicators KPIs. Here we keep asking the common sense question, “Is our process effective? Is it taking us to where we really want to go?”
Pest control is the process of naming and controlling those behaviors that would otherwise return our team to the undercurrents. For example; a project hero with a big ego who claims all the credit, keeps a team in the undercurrents – constantly in reactive mode, fighting fires. That becomes a drip feed poison that breads dependency. No one bothers to try anything new, believing they will just get shot down.
By comparison a team that operates in the collective sensing and wisdom level, proactively identifies the issues and deliberately goes down to the undercurrents to resolve them, exploiting all the diversity and strengths of the team. Get to love going there, go with the flow, harvest ideas in the turmoil and resist for a while the temptation to escape to the supposed comfort of our conventional linear process level thinking; to organize our way out of it. That will follow in its own time.
Traditional Project Management focuses on identifying risks (Pests) in the execution phase of a project then reducing their probability and their impact. Tipu Ake turns the conventional Risk matrix upside down (Exhibit 2) and encourages us to think beyond the origin into the positive sector of opportunity (Birds), particularly during the initiation phase.
Exhibit 2
For more information on Tipu Ake visit www.tipuake.org.nz where you will find it shared in the public domain for the benefit of all the worlds future children. Here you can download the model and PowerPoint explanatories.
In Tipu Ake Leadership is not equal to “the leader” (Exhibit 3)
Too often we equate Leadership (Leading people) with Management (Managing things). These are two separate dimensions Taking a managing things approach alone is a “no go” path to exceptional organizational performance.
With Tipu Ake leadership is not an individual thing, anyone can display you been in a team, complete with a Project Manager (maybe you even) leadership was coming from others? Why not use this -
An irony: The most powerful leaders are those who know how to give away their power and recognition!
Exhibit 3
The Tipu Ake Organizational Self-Assessment Tool.
Tipu Ake is a cyclic model full of loops. We can and should be operating at all levels simultaneously. Don't for one moment confuse this organic cyclic behavioral model with the linear process based approach of conventional Capability Maturity Development Models.
We do the Tipu Ake Organizational Self Assessment using our collective sensing and wisdom. The scale is course (0, 1 or 2) and our own opinion does not count, instead we try to assess how the organization collectively would respond to the statements by pretending we are a fly on the wall of the cafeteria. The self assessment tool tells us for each of the levels whether we are operating reactively; always responding and firefighting on the “pest” side, or proactively; seeking out opportunities on the “bird” side. Here is an example of the undercurrent level assessment statements.(Exhibit 3) You can download the rest from www.tipuake.org.nz
Answer these questions in sensing mode: put aside your own opinion and sense what the collective wisdom of your organization would say. (Be a fly on the wall in the cafeteria) In cases of wide disagreement, try to find out what different experiences the other person has that makes their answer to the same question so different.
Exhibit 4
The Tipu Ake Team Groundrules: (Exhibit 5)
We distilled some of the saying and stories that they shared with us into the following groundrules for Tipu Ake style team and leadership behavior. They are modeled on the values of their ancestor Toi, a renowned Pacific explorer, sharer and community builder. These are the same values that the school, Te Kura Toitu or Te Whaiti Nui-a-Toi, uses internally and what they aim to instill in their students. Try these with your team :
Exhibit 5
Tipu Ake Organizational Visioning Tools (Fig 6)
An Organization that applies Tipu Ake ki te Ora must start by defining its vision of Ora, the destination state of wellness it aspires to, which in reality will never reach as it changes as we learn more. It then works backwards to breaks this down into outcomes, indicators and projects. This is somewhat alike The Natural Step process of backcasting http://au.naturalstep.org/framework/framback.html
Here is an example that was used to initially scope the community sustainability program that was used to pilot and develop Tipu Ake visioning processes and tools. You will see how this is organically expanding as the program proceeds at http://www.kaitiakitanga.net/projects/index.htm
Exhibit 6
Tipu Ake – New tools for program and project portfolio management
Organic program management:
The Tipu Ake ki te Ora visioning process, because it is driven from the destination state of Wellbeing (ORA) that we seek, results in many individual project paths that could lead towards this. We make no attempt to limit or priorities our projects at the start. Instead we emulate nature in the rainforest, which allows all manner of seeds to germinate under, in and even above the canopy, all of which are highly interdependent on all other species in the ecosystem and just waiting for the particular conditions (opportunity) that allow them to grow and flourish. Individual projects do not exist in isolation; they all find themselves as a part of a highly interdependent parallel program where everything is organic. (Others may call this Systems Thinking, Boundary-less Operation. Complexity or Chaos Theory.)
Compare this with conventional project management:
In conventional project thinking, we often look at the present situation, find one or more opportunities to solve a problem or to improve something, prioritise those that we want to focus on, then plan to get down to doing it, largely in isolation from everything else that is going on around it in its environment. Projects are run in silo's and the focus is on sticking to the plan for each individual project and delivering its pre-described, tightly specified “output”. The result may be “outcomes” that do not always meet our or our customer's real expectations.
Program and Project Roadmaps: (Exhibit 7)
With Tipu Ake we don't talk much about project plans or confuse ourselves with the term Strategic Planning.
Instead we talk about Roadmaps that describe the multiple paths that lead to our destination and focus more on the interdependencies between these activities and the dynamic real world environment we all work in. Milestones on these roadmaps allow us to keep track of where we are up to on each path. All along the route we continually sense opportunities, changes in environment, constraints, and risks, then use our collective wisdom to make decisions that will maximize the “outcomes” the whole program will deliver.
Here is an example of a roadmap – perhaps it looks complex and highly interconnected to you. Sorry, that's life!
Exhibit 7
See this Roadmap example in real time at: http://www.kaitiakitanga.net/program/roadmap.ppt
Organizational (Partnership / Alliancing) Process Map: (Exhibit 8)
With Tipu Ake we don't bother drawing organizational hierarchy charts as they put up more barriers and do little to help us understand the processes and interactions needed to implement a complex program. (These also normally put those who provide or control the funding at the top. In Tipu Ake terms money is treated as just another tool like a hammer or a spade, and what is really important are those who put their energy behind it.)
So instead we draw Organizational Partnership Maps which show the relationship between all parties involved, and what they can each contribute. This allows us to seek the win–win opportunities that will flow from their participation.
You may note some similarities between this and the new form of alliancing contracts that increasingly are being used in major civil construction and similar projects. The alliance can be a team with strong behavioral groundrules but no independent legal status that integrates all parties in a project in a way that allows all to share the risks and rewards. For information on alliancing contracts as they are being applied in Australia and New Zealand see http://www.pci.d2g.com
Exhibit 8
See this Organizational Map in action at http://www.kaitiakitanga.net/program/structure.ppt
Pilot Case Study
Check www.kaitiakitanga.net (program tab) to see how the small community of Te Whaiti Nui-a-Toi that inspired Tipu Ake is piloting this thinking on their Kaitiakitanga Program – To safe guard their grandchildren's grandchildren's futures.
Conclusion
Our world is changing, our old models for organization structures and leadership may not be well suited for the information age with all its complexity. In this paper we have considered a different approach:
- Vision – being determined and unified about where we want to end up,.
- Verbs – doing the things that will take us there.
- Viagra - as Tipu Ake, a potent medicine that helps us grow from within.