Context Matters

If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there. – Lewis Carroll

I grew up in the woods. We moved around a bit, but for most of upper elementary school our trailer was nestled down deep into the forest. My family settled in on a football field sized property nestled snug between two high ridges. Doan’s Creek ran the length of one long side of the yard, parallel the worn driveway leading to the back barn. The closest neighbors were a mile away. We were secluded out in the natural world.

The scenery was beautiful and serene, towering trees and rock formations, crisp clean air and crystal-clear spring water. We often saw deer and racoons in the morning or heard owls and coyotes at night. Not being a particularly outdoorsy child, I’m not sure that I fully appreciated these aspects of our home in the moment.

One day, however, I plucked up my courage and decided to explore. Out the front door, down the steps, I walked across the yard to the creek and dipped in my toes. The air was hot, that sticky kind of humid, lush, thick heat that clings to your skin in the summertime. The cool running water felt good as I waded in further, up to my knees. Looking to the left, I knew the creek would run down to the gravel road, narrowing to a small culvert. Nothing very interesting there. To the right, I wondered, what lies in that direction?

Not have any other engagements, I turned right and started walking deeper into the woods. I followed the creek along, splashing through the shallow parts and half-heartedly looking out for snakes. No watch, no phone, no thought at all about where I might be going or how long I had been away. I watched the water spiders skim across the surface, tried catching the tadpoles in my hands, and stared into crawdad holes.

After a bit, I could tell that the light was changing. The heat receded a little and the shadows on the bank stretched and grew. I was resting up on a broad flat rock, skipping stones, when I heard the faint sound of Mom yelling my name. Not understanding the fuss, I took my time to gather myself up, standing and stretching. Mom and Dad came crashing through the brush, breathless and sweaty, clearly upset and teary eyed. “Where have you been?” Dad shouted at me. My mind didn’t comprehend, “Well I’ve been here of course!” I answered. Once the elation of locating me wore off, I was grounded to the yard for two weeks.

As a parent now, I can appreciate their reaction. Their ten-year old daughter had walked off into the woods alone and disappeared for most of a day without food, water or sunscreen. Their immediate fear was that I was lost, unaware of my whereabouts and unable to find my home. I tried many times to explain that this wasn’t the case at all. I knew exactly where I was the entire day. I began at the house, followed the creek out, and when I was ready, I had fully intended to follow the creek back home. I knew the path.

I think of this experience every time I start a new project or set a new goal. Usually, the endpoint, or the goal, comes to mind first – I want to run a marathon, I want to write a book, I want to grow a garden. I’m quick to make decisions, so once the idea takes root my mind machinery kicks into overdrive. “If I am here…” I think to myself, “and I want to go there, how do I do it?” From my starting point, what path do I follow to take me to the goal? I’m Orienting myself relative to my current position and as compared to my desired future state.

Imagine you are a ship out at sea. In every direction lies blue ocean and open skies. How can you ever chart a course unless you can determine where you are and decide where you want to go? I’m always amazed at those early explorers who looked up to the sky and used the stars to get their bearings, calculate their position and then point their ships to new shores.

This process of Orienting is the first step in the Conceptual Gantt Planning System (CGPS). Before you can make a plan for a project, you must know where you are and where you want to go, your current state and desired future state. Without these anchors to define the beginning and the end of the project, project managers cannot discern their location along the path of the project, they will be lost within the details.

When you are lost, decisions become increasingly difficult. Without context provided by Orientation, one cannot judge which option will move you closer to or further from your goal. If you are lost in the woods, you are supposed to stay in one location until help can locate you. Moving around blindly exacerbates the issue, burns necessary energy and leads to exhaustion. The same is true if you are lost in a project. Running in every direction only makes the issue worse, you must Reorient yourself to regain your position and direct your efforts productively.

Within the process of CGPS, Orienting means defining the starting point and end point of a project.  It is asking yourself, what are the first and last steps on your critical path?  For a simple home renovation project example, it is looking at my kitchen and saying – I don’t have a backsplash today, but I want to install a backsplash by March.  Current State = no backsplash, Future State = Backsplash.  In a larger construction project example, today there is an empty lot without utility hookups. By June, there will be a two-story single-family home.  Current State = Empty Lot, Future State = Livable Home. You can even apply Orienting to service-based projects.  For example, today our restaurant can serve fifty meals in two shifts.  By next fall, we want to serve one hundred and fifty. Current State = fifty, Future State = one hundred and fifty.     

Orientation is the crucial first step in CGPS because if you don’t understand your starting position and don’t know where you are headed, you cannot possibly chart a path to get there. As Lewis Carol said, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” As project managers we must clearly define the start and end of our projects. Only then will we be able to fill in the plan, to truly understand the steps required to bring us from the beginning to the end.

Once you have your Orientation, these fixed points then become your guardrails. Each time there is a change, an unexpected decision or a deviation from plan this can then be judged relative to your known start and end. Does this change impact the end result? Does it take me closer to the end or set me back towards the start? With this positional understanding, our responses to a project’s unexpected moments can be proportional to their true impact.

In next week’s post, we’ll examine the second step in the CGMP system: Scope. Scope is the definition of all of the steps required in between a project’s start and finish. Project managers play a critical role in understanding the many possible paths and enabling a team to choose the optimal path. In future posts, we’ll also talk about the utility of process-minded thinking, and how this mindset can supercharge our understanding of a project’s critical path.

I hope that you are enjoying this discussion of the CGMP approach to Project Management. I’d love to hear your feedback along the way! Drop me a line at hello@contextmatterspm.com

#Orient