(for stakeholders, risks, the WBS and just about everything else in project management)
by Carl Pritchard, PMP, PMI-RMP, EVP
I confess to being a hat fan. I love them. My first real hat (beyond baseball caps and other sports caps) was a leather Stetson fedora (a la Indiana Jones) from Meyer the Hatter in New Orleans. Before I walked into Meyer's, I was just another guy. When I walked out, I was Carl Pritchard, A Man With a Hat. It's a different persona, and it comes with different insight.
I'm not the only person who thinks this way. Edward DeBono wrote a landmark book on developing creative energy in a group. His book, Six Thinking Hats, focuses on the difference in creativity that can be achieved when you get people to take on different roles.
While DeBono specifies the roles that people need to take on, I just believe that if you adopt a variety of perspectives, you achieve many of the same benefits. And I think there are side benefits beyond creativity as well. Specifically, if you're trying to generate a list of risks, tasks, stakeholders, issues, milestones or almost anything else from a creative team, hats work wonders. They work their magic in terms of data volume, candor and degrees of participation.
Hats and Data Volume
The next time you need to identify a list of risks, try brainstorming with your team. In a reasonable time, they'll start to run out of ideas. When you see the energy begin to drain from the room, get them to try on another hat. Instead of asking, "What are the risks on the project?" try reframing the inquiry. "If you were the customer, what would you see as the risks?" That's right. Have them put on a "customer hat." Think about the range of possibilities here:
- the worker bee hat
- the executive hat
- the admin hat
- the procurement hat
- the maintenance hat
You can see how the list could go on and on. With each new hat, different ideas will come to the fore. And with each new hat, team members will find energy in the discussion that was otherwise being lost.
Hats and Group Participation
Anyone who owns a nice hat knows the shift in personality that goes with it. When I'm wearing my straw panama, I'm a different person than when I'm hatless. I know if I were to be spotted by someone trying to describe me walking down the street, they'd say, He was the guy wearing the straw-colored panama hat. The hat becomes the persona. Oddly enough, the same thing happens when we're using "hats" for idea generation.
This is extremely useful information in dealing with environments with a disproportionate number of introverts. For those of you who have ever taken the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), you were labeled either an "E" (extrovert) or an "I" (introvert). The American population is loaded with "E"s. There are far many more Americans who tip the scale toward E than I. That actually leads to a problem. The extroverts have a nasty habit of believing that the introverts need to be fixed. If we can just get them past their introversion, they theorize, they'll be better people for it.
First, the I people do NOT need fixing. They're fine, just the way they are. The challenge in the group setting, however, is drawing them out for participation. And again, I think the hats help us there.
Be they introvert or extrovert, if we can get those around us to put on different hats, in many cases, their individual personae are washed away. When we ask, What do you see as the risks?, they may become uncomfortable about sharing their perspectives. But when we ask, If you were in Marketing, what would you see as the risks?, the tone and tenor of the discussion changes entirely. Anyone in this position is now free to say, Well, I don't see any particular risks, but if I were in MARKETING, I'd be freaked out about this, that and the other thing. Suddenly, there is license to share, but the sharing happens in the persona of someone else. As a result, the potential backwash in a creative setting about dumb ideas is gone. If there is a dumb idea, it wasn't the individual's dumb idea. It was the dumb idea of the persona in question.
Hats and Candor
I'm flying out to Florida tomorrow morning. In class this week, I asked my students what risks I face on the flight down. They offered a half-dozen answers, but no-one brought up the possibility of a plane crash. I kept prodding until one woman (Jami) finally coughed up, You could be in a crash and die.
The reaction among her peers was immediate and dramatic. One of her teammates in class quickly shushed her. Another chided her by saying, Jami! Don't say that!
I asked why everyone was so concerned. I said it was a legitimate risk, given the scenario. Jami then voiced their fears, It's just if you say it, it could happen.
Did Jami's revelation in any way increase the probability that my flight would crash? No. But she was wrestling with an age-old concern about self-fulfilling prophecies. If we say it, it may happen.
Back to the hats! If we use hats as a deflection in tough group settings, we give people license to bring up the potential bad news they might otherwise be loathe to identify. They may be far more comfortable saying that Finance or Management might see X as a concern than attesting to it themselves. It's much easier to say that someone else may perceive bad news than putting it on our own shoulders.
As I slip on a series of different hats (to protect the pate under my thinning hair from the Florida sun), and prepare for tomorrow's flight, I find new energy with each option. Gray straw? Panama? Fedora? Brown felt outback hat? It's a tough call. Each hat represents a new personality with different perspectives, attitudes and receptions. The nice thing is that if I decide I don't like the hat, I can always take it off again.
Carl Pritchard welcomes your communications at carl@carlpritchard.com. He can also be found on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. He is the author of The Project Management Communications Tool Kit and was the former speaker's coach at the National Leadership Conference.