Category Archives: Leadership

The Gorilla learns Management Values from Cinderella

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The_Wizard_of_Oz_Bert_Lahr_1939It was dark through the office, hours after everyone else had gone home. Okay, pretty sure Greg was off in some even darker corner coding, but that didn’t count, he was one of those nocturnal breeds of coders. I was in my office busy denting my desk with my head. It hurt sure, but the pain was taking my mind off my larger pains.

Pivot or persevere, burn down charts, customer value over stakeholder value, story points, user stories, Intrinsic vs Extrinsic value, Stoos, agile, Lean. I was a project manager, I ran a PMO, I was darn good at what I did. Only what I did didn’t seem to be what was being done anymore. What happened to my carefully planned out planning cycle? Where did my Gantt chart go?

I guess I got that things were changing. I just didn’t have a clue how to get from where I was now. This was safe, this was comfortable, this was.

“Not as it should be.”

Sigh. You know the expression “a monkey on your back”? Well I had a Gorilla on my desk. He was usually leading me down the primrose path only to pummel me with my own errors. My conscience in the form of an 800 pound gorilla (imaginary).

“Hogarth, I already know I need to change. I just haven’t the bloodiest flipping clue how to get from where I am now to where I need to be.”

Hogarth smiled at me, his white canines glinting in the light of the desk lamp. “That part’s simple, you have to see the world not as it is. Instead see the world as it should be.”

I looked back at him, “Sure all and good. What if the world as it should be is big bad and scary? How am I supposed to lead my PMO into this new way? What can I do to make it easier for them?”

The inky black gorilla smiled again, “By showing courage and kindness“

“Another one of your trite aphorisms?” I muttered. “Who did you get that from, the Dali Lama?”

Hogarth shook his head as he snatched the banana from my fruit, “Nah, Cinderella told me that after her 20th wedding anniversary ball.” Pealing the fruit Hogarth looked wistfully at the ceiling, “Now she knew how to throw a party.”

“Wait” I held up my hands in confusion. “Cinderella is real?”

Hogarth gave me one of those painful, pitiful looks when I’ve said something grossly idiotic. “Imaginary gorilla, remember? She’s not real, but neither am I, so yes I can talk to her.”

“Oh, right, I knew that.”

Hogarth bite off half the banana and began talking, “So let me break this down for you into a really easy question.”

I looked at him. His easy questions usually required a lot of work for me. “Go on…”

“Do you want to be a Good Witch or a Bad Witch?”

Now with the Wizard of Oz? Oz, Lion, Courage… Oh…

How Will You Face the Changing Tide of Business?

Whether we like it or not, the face of business is changing. You don’t have to be using Agile or Lean or any of the recent trends in development/ project/ business transformations to be impacted. Because odds are pretty much a million to one that if you’re not transforming your business, one of your competitors is.

We can try and deny the changing tide. However that would be like trying to deny the actual tides (Cnut the Great Tried that, didn’t work). Business has been going through a constant change since it first began. From the Master/ Apprentice trades of the middle ages, to the early factories of the industrial age, to the martini fueled age of Mad Men, to Martin Friedman’s “Shareholder Value” and beyond. The simple fact is business will continue to change and evolve.

So we should give up trying to deny that it will and instead decide how we’re going to face it.

With “Courage and Kindness”: You find inspiration anywhere you look, so long as you are willing to open your eyes. I found that inspiration watching the live action version of Disney’s Cinderella (Mar 2015). These words were the mantra Ella’s dying mother gave to her and which the young maiden lived by even when her step-mother and sisters had subjugated her down to little more than a slave.

And that I believe is the secret to how managers are going to deal with the disruptions facing the business world.

Courage:
I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear. -Nelson Mandela.

It is absolutely okay to not be comfortable with change. To not be happy that your world has shifted.

Even to be scared of what it all means to you.

You just need to not let it keep you from acting. Fear will drive you into a dark cave from which you will just lash out at anyone who comes close. Grab a torch, get out of the cave and explore this new world.

Kindness: No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted. – Aesop

Think back to your own time in school as a child. Odds are probably really high you had these two kinds of teachers.

Teacher A- Instructor: This teacher wasn’t a bad teacher, you just wouldn’t ever get warm from their smile. Business like to a fault, factual, direct. You learned from this teacher, but you were never inspired. You did the work, you got it done and you made fun of the teacher in the lunch room.

Teacher B- Mentor: This is the teacher who always had a smile. They told stories that turned out to teach you a lot about the subject. They were available and approachable outside of class. They were the teacher you went to when you had a problem.

The question is, which kind of the teachers above would you like to be as a manager? More important question, which kind do you think your employees want you to be?

And just remember, kindness is easy, kindness doesn’t cost much. A warm smile is the universal language of kindness. William Arthur Ward

Until next time, remember to keep some bananas handy for the Gorilla in the Room.

Gorillas don’t need authority to lead

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“What do you mean you’ve got to go? We’re three weeks behind schedule we need all hands on deck.” I was gripping the phone so hard I was sure I was leaving finger prints in the plastic. “No, no, no. We went over this. If we can just get through this release, we can all take some time off. We’ll even get comp time.. Uh huh… yeah. Okay I’ll talk to you when you get back.”

I slumped back into my chair and stared at the ceiling. My half hearted attempt to get the phone back on its receiver without looking only resulted in the phone falling to the desk. I left it there and continued to stare up at the ceiling. This was the third person on the project to take a vacation this month. The project was already an aggressive one and I’d under estimated resources so every day was critical. At this rate we’d be red and slipping by the end of the week.

I heard the distinctive click of the phone being placed back on the receiver. Great, just what I needed. “Go away Hogarth.” I didn’t hear anything. Of course I don’t think he made any noise when he didn’t want to. Still I knew he was still there. He was staring at me right now. He was probably thinking about how much this conversation sounded like my last project. He was staring at me now. He was just waiting for the right moment.

“Augh!” I threw my hands up as I sat up in my chair. Coming up right my eyes fell on my gorilla. Hogarth just sat in the chair across the desk and stared at me. I hate it when he does that. “Okay, okay, so I didn’t get them the time off after the last launch. We had that special project pop up and we needed everyone on it right away. And we couldn’t have a party because we were in the third quarter belt tightening season.”

Hogarth nodded. “Uh huh…”

“Hey don’t you start!” I snapped. “It shouldn’t even matter, I’m in charge of the project and I said it needs to be done. They just need to pony up and buckle down.”

It’s easy to forget that the arm span of a gorilla is considerably greater than we humans. I was reminded when a leathery palm reached from across the desk and smacked me upside the head.

“Ow.. Hey!” Hogarth was still sitting calmly in the chair opposite me. Had I not just witnessed (and felt) his hit to my cranium it would have been hard to imagine he had ever moved. “What was that for!?”

I think Hogarth may have actually rolled his eyes. It was hard to tell with the bushy eyebrows. “Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, shame on you?”

I blinked. “Seriously?” I said. “You’re going to start spouting old English proverbs at me now? What’s next?”

“Joan of Arc.” he said.

Okay, now he was just playing with me. Just trying to put me off balance before he gave me the real message. Right? Suddenly the same leathery palm that had so recently reached out and touched me came up again. I started to flinched, until he turned the hand towards him and gave his chest one sharp beat.

Okay, maybe he wasn’t’ playing…

“We can agree she saved France from destruction?” He asked.

I nodded.

“And we can agree that at the time, the thought of a woman, much less a girl leading an army is pretty absurd?”

Again I nodded.

“And when she started, did she have any authority?”

I shook my head.

Hogarth nodded. “That’s right. What did she have. Why did people follow her?”

“They had faith in her. They thought she was sent by god.”

Hogarth nodded. “And what underlies a belief like faith?”

Hogarth knew I didn’t know the answer. He wouldn’t have asked the question if he thought I knew it. So I just waited.

“Trust.”

Trust…

It doesn’t matter if you’re the president of a nation or the janitor cleaning the offices. Without trust you can have all the authority in the world and people won’t go that extra mile for you. Without trust you won’t be given the opportunity to excel and grow. You might get them to do what you tell them to do. Will you get them to do it with passion? You might have your job, will you keep it and grow?

And with trust, you can lead a nation’s armies when you are nothing more than a slip of a girl.

You’ve got to ask yourself, what do you want to work on improving? Authority or Trust?

Which is going to go farther with your team?

Ask not what your Gorilla can do for you

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“Go away Hogarth…”

I knew it was him. I mean who else would loom in my doorway at 8:30 at night? Every sane person in the company had gone home hours ago.

“So what does that make you?”

Sigh… I really hate when he does that. Pushing back from my keyboard I looked across the dark office to where my gorilla stood. The few lights illuminating the hallway lit him in an eerie haze that made him almost ghost like in appearance. Given how he haunted my every move, it wasn’t that far from the truth.

“I’m not dead yet,” he said before he swung his arms forward to propel his body into the darkness of my office. I lost sight of him for a moment, as he moved out of the faint light cast through the door. And then there he was, his leathery muzzle poking into the light given off by my monitor and his teeth flashing as he offered up a toothy smile. “Though you’re not looking so great. When was the last time you saw the sun?”

“Very funny, Hogarth, I don’t have time for funny. I’m three chapters behind on our book. You do want to see this book published someday, right?” Looking at him, I gave a triumphant grin. I had him on this one. It’s not like I was toiling away on office work. I ‘d learned my lesson on that long ago. I was just taking advantage of the quiet of after hours office to get in some quality writing time (using my own laptop of course).

I could feel Hogarth’s eyes boring through me from the darkness beyond the monitor glow. As he spoke, his white canines sparkled in the light. “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Those who can and are good, do both.”

I blinked, “What? Seriously?” Okay, he’d gone to far this time. “I’ve done everything you’ve told me. I’ve gotten better at being a person, a project manager, a manager, a coach, you name it. I’m applying your lessons and things are going great here.”

He nodded, “Yep, you are. So why aren’t you at the agile coaching circle tonight?”

What the heck? “Are you smoking banana peels again? I’m not there because I’m here, writing. You’d think with you hanging around me, you wouldn’t have to ask. What on earth can anyone there teach me that you can’t?”

Hogarth leaned back into the darkness, his entire form become just a faint outline in the greater darkness of my office. “Who said anything about learning?”

Now I was really confused. And that usually meant he was about to hit me upside the head with some painful lesson. I’d gotten a lot better about seeing these coming. Only I didn’t know what it was, I only knew it was coming. “What?”

“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

Yep, he did it again… Oh, my head.

 

The Kennedy Approach to Being a Professional

Until recently I never really understood why I have become so passionate about helping others. I spent a long period of my career trying to stay below the radar. Don’t rock the boat, don’t stick out your head, don’t go the extra mile.

After Hogarth entered my life (See Wake up and Smell the Gorilla) , I found myself coming out of the bunkers and reaching out to help others. Even during the dark times, when I too was unemployed, I found myself reaching out to help others. I didn’t even think about it or when I did I was just thinking about my own karmic bank account. I was still early in my path and had much still to learn from Hogarth.

For the last year I’ve been regularly attending the Silicon Valley PMI Job Search breakfast. Why? I can hear many of you ask. After all I’m gainfully employed and am very happy with the job. Why would I be going to a breakfast for out of work project managers? For a long while, I thought I was just building my own network for a rainy day. I had a job, surely I can help others. The roles might be reversed someday and I’d need that persons help. Ultimately I thought I was doing it just to build up job karma for myself. It was all about me, right?

Then came the day I finally heard and understood what the facilitator had said many times before. Skip Le Fetrawas also employed and yet was devoting many hours a month to running the breakfast. Skip regularly said “I keep doing this because I get as much out of it as I do giving to it.” This took a while to sink into my head and it took another conversation for it to really gel.

We’d had a particularly intense meeting. One of the attendees had been facing some very specific challenges and the meeting had entered what I call “Group Coach” mode to help this one person. Now being a regular, and employed, I tend to be someone people turn to a lot, especially if Skip has to run off to a meeting. So on this day I had one of the attendees come to me. The attendee (We’ll call this attendee Pat) had something on their mind and needed to get it off. I was there to help. They said (I’ll paraphrase heavily), “This was a great session, X really needed it. I’m just curious, we did something like this for Y two weeks ago and while it really helped X and Y, I don’t feel like it is addressing everyone’s needs.”

I mentally rocked back on my heals on this one. Not so much by what Pat said. What got me was how everything was dropping into place as I formed my reply. I suddenly realized it wasn’t about building karma for myself. I suddenly realized why I help people and why it makes me feel so good.

Because it’s the right thing to do.

On that day I was Hogarth to Pat. President Kennedy’s speech came to my mind and the whole picture became clear. When I explained to Pat that what they should be getting out of the meeting is “what can I give to others.” As Skip had said for the last year, he learns and gets so much just from giving to the meeting.

Do it because it’s right, the rest will follow.

What can you do for your team?

Does a Gorilla by any other name still smell?

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Or- What’s my title? 

I stared at the words. And all I felt was a complete and total lack of enthusiasm threatening to overwhelm my very being.

–  Project Management Professional  –

How… dead. I just didn’t have any feeling for the words. Words that described a good portion of my professional career. Words that had gotten me where I was, only to leave me feeling flat and listless. I sighed. “Oh well, it’s not like the words make the man.”

I moved my mouse over the “Ok” button and prepared to commit to another 1000 business cards. One thousand cards that described me about as well as calling the Bugatti Veyron Super “just another car.”

“Why don’t you just change the title?”

Oh, great, Hogarth… I looked up from my computer screen only to find my office completely empty. Blinking I started to wonder if I’d taken to imaging my imaginary gorilla.

“Nope,” came his rumbling voice from behind me. Turning about in my seat I watched as Hogarth squeezed his way through the window to my office. The third floor open window.

“Hogarth!” Would I ever get tired of saying that? Yes, I already had. Would I ever get to stop saying it? One remains eternally hopeful. “Why are you climbing in my window?”

Pivoting to put his feet on the floor he rolled his eyes at me. “Because I’m a gorilla, duh…” Moving past me, making a beeline for my fichus he said, “Besides the elevator is out of service and you need a badge to use the stairs.”

Sigh, I did ask. “Hands off the fichus!” Hogarth turned to give me a pained look. “Why are you here?” I asked.

“Why not?”

Sigh. I decided to ignore him and turned back to my computer. I had a 1000 business cards to order.

“You know,” Hogarth drawled. “I’ve been thinking about a career change.”

Okay, that got my attention. Maybe he’d decide to take up flying and would be so busy with flight school he wouldn’t be around to bother me. “Oh?” I said hopefully.

He nodded, turning to run a hand across the small wooden conference table beyond my desk. “Yeah, I was thinking of being a beaver.”

“You can’t be a beaver, you’re a gorilla!” I snapped. Now he was just being silly and I didn’t have time for silly.

“What? There some law that says a gorilla can’t change careers?”

“Hogarth, being a beaver isn’t a career, it’s a species. You want to be president of the US then more power to you, but no amount of wishful thinking is going to make you a beaver!”

Hogarth turned around and gave me one of those smiles. You know, the one. The one that tells me I’d just walked right into the lesson he’d been trying to teach me. “You’re right. I’ll always be a gorilla, can’t fight birth. So were you born a project manager?”

Yeah, that smile…

 

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

Regular readers will recall that I’ve recently been at the SFAgile2012 conference. Something I didn’t cover in my prior blogs, on that conference, was my own loss of words to describe just what I did. When you’re surrounded by a room full of agile and lean visionaries, coaches, inspirational and thought thinkers, describing yourself as a “project manager” not only feels inadequate, it can make you feel unclean. My twitter handle didn’t help me feel any better. When I first joined twitter, I was damn proud of my PMP certification and it made perfect sense to use JBC_PMP. When in a room full of people who  think agile certifications are not worth the paper they are printed on, imagine how one feels to advertise that you have that “waterfall” certification.

In short, I find myself unsatisfied with the description and title of Project Manager (or Program Manager).  It’s the title I’ve held for the majority of my professional career and still hold in my day job. This isn’t a new dissatisfaction,  I have grappled with this before in the “Armchair Gorilla.” In the comments of that blog Tobias Mayer ‘s suggest it was time to change what I called myself and while I realized he was right, I didn’t have a good term to use it its place. Like it or hate it, it’s the title of common use and HR doesn’t argue about paying me.

Attending SFAgile 2012 made me question all this again. This was in no small part from attending Tobias’ talk on “The Why of Scrum.” In this talk he expands on his earlier blog on Scrum not being project management (see below). Again I was left me hanging by loose ends. I can’t argue with Tobias that the strict PMBoK definition of a PM doesn’t have a lot of purpose in a pure agile shop. Thing is, where does that leave me? I’m not an engineer turned PM. I’m not a Wharton MBA with business plans spewing forth from my mouth. I’m an ex-art student, customer support guy who grew into a role that most people call project management. So is there a place for me in this emerging world of radical lean agile management?

Yes, yes there is. Because I’m not my title, I’m something else. The question is what? You really need to go back to “Armchair Gorilla.”  and my “I’m R2-D2 ” blog to get my full discourse on what I see as my role. The short form is I’m the guy who helps the team be excellent. It’s not my job to be the super star, it’s my job to help the team be stars. This can take many forms, from dealing with the overhead process (past a certain size, nearly all companies have “process”) so they don’t have to, facilitate communication, battle IT to get the servers back up, or even make a double cappuccino with a twist of lemon if that’s what’s needed.

The question is: What the heck do I call this role?

Let’s take a look at the language we use, and the problems inherent to them.

Project: Even in the lean and agile space we still end up defaulting to this word most of the time. It is a catch all word that sums up “what the heck are we doing?” as well as all the overhead baggage needed to put a product out to the customer. The biggest flaw I see with this word is that to often it is equated only with the development effort. A project starts when the developer starts to build and ends when development is done. Projects are so much more. From the first idea to the first delighted customer is all part of your project.

Unfortunately the word also has a fair amount of negative baggage tied to it. The word project summons up visions of rigidity, sequential flow, punishing process and all manner of ills that can befall the creation of something that delights the customer.

And “program” has pretty much all the same baggage, so let’s just lump it all on one baggage train for now.

Manager: We only have to look to Dictionary.com to see the first glimmers of the problem.

“A person who has control or direction of an institution, business, etc., or of a part, division, or phase of it.”

Notice the distinct lack of the word “people?” One of the other definitions points to the word “Manages” and the 3rd definition for Manages is

“to dominate or influence (a person) by tact, flattery, or artifice.”

Ooh! I get to DOMINATE! Yeah!. My people are just assets like my computers. Can I start calling our Health Care provider “People Tech Support?”

The word manage has come to imply control over people and that’s a huge problem. Manager Tools has long maintained that “Role Power” is a flawed tool for good management. You need to have a relationship with your people if you are going to be successful. Just by their very title, we set managers up to fail from the get go.

Project Manager (Program Manager):  I know! Let’s take two words, that  already have issues, slam together and we’ll be bound to have recipe for greatness, right?

No, no you won’t.

Even if we don’t acknowledge all the bad baggage that has grown up around this title, we’d have a hard time justifying the use of the title to define this role. The title has no human factor in it. There is nothing about the title that talks to the important work that this role does. There isn’t anything in the title to indicate you are there for the team.

Project Leader: “Take me to your leader.” When the alien ask you this, I don’t think they want you to take them to an effigy of MS Project. You can’t lead a project, because a project isn’t a person. Add to this, you’ve got the hole leader issue. You see I own a horse. That old saying of “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink?” It’s a load of horse poop. If a horse doesn’t want to move, you aren’t moving it, at least not in a straight line (we won’t get into horse training here, wrong blog). Instead I tend to think of this role as more the person who asks the horse “where’s the water?”

Team Lead: A title that has become synonymous with “un paid” psuedo-manager. The best coder is the team lead. Not because of any skill with the team, just because he can crank out more lines of good code in a day than anyone else. Let’s just leave that one on the cutting room floor and move on.

Project Lead: We can leave Project Lead in the same cutting room pile as Team Lead. It’s got the same issues, on top of not having any people focus.

Coach: “Put me in coach, I’m ready to go.” Coach is a good word. In the literal sense it is someone who trains, though really a coach is more of someone who helps to bring the best out of you. The problem comes when you try and modify it, in order to give it more description.

  • Project Coach: “Come on, Gantt chart, give me ten more sit ups!” You can’t coach a project, so this doesn’t work to define this role.
  • Agile Coach: “But our project is waterfall.” Very limited in its scope.
  • Lean Coach: “Let’s burn off those calories.” See Agile coach.
  • Waterfall Coach: “This is your barrel, the entrance to Niagara is over there.”

Coach might be a good word, the question is “Coach of what?”

Facilitator: Another great word. It’s issue is more in the baggage of its other uses. Facilitating a project planning session is just what this role should do. Facilitating conflict between the teams. Facilitating communication with the stakeholders. Like a good catalyst, a facilitator causes activity to happen, without itself being effected.

The worry is that the title has a well established place in the business world. It is considered a specialist and not an “always there” job role. Can it rise above these preconceived limitations?

Project Coordinator: We already have beaten the word project into glue. The word coordinator, on its surface seems like a good word. Non-threatening, more passive than active, implies working with things outside oneself. When you dig in though, there are two things you run into. The first is the baggage. In the formal project management world, a project coordinator is an low or entry level position. Project coordinators work for project managers. This kind of baggage makes it a bad term to use for this role.

Then we look at the dictionary and are forced to scratch our heads. “Coordinator” points to “coordinate,” which points to “coordination.” This in turn points to “coordinating” or “coordinated.” Which points back to “coordinate.” Circular logic and I still don’t know what your job is!

Scrum Master: Tobias Mayer (@tobiasmayer ) wrote a great blog titled “Scrum is not Project Management” to which I wrote the reply blog “Armchair Gorilla” where I  ended up agreeing with Tobias (after much gnashing of teeth). This blog is really an extension of that thread.

However the question at hand is if this title serves to describe the role. The answer is, “no, it cannot.” First off is the word scrum. Unless you are using scrum, then it isn’t an appropriate word. Second off is the word Master. Anyone who knows anything about getting a CSM certificate knows that you are a master of none. Most likely the entire title came about as a riff on “Master of Ceremonies.” Unfortunately it has lost that connection and the title of Scrum Master, even in the narrow confines of Scrum Teams, has dubious value.

Servant Leader: I’m pretty sure I’ve put down in writing that I love the essence of this title. Having started my career in customer support, I have always held onto the roots that I am serving my customers in what ever job I do. And who my customer is can be very broad. I think of my team as my customers. If I don’t help them, I have failed my customer.

I just don’t like the title itself. Servant is tied up in centuries of toil and oppression. Am I the team’s serf? Do I polish their shoes and lay out their best coat for the evening meal? And then the word Leader has its own issues.  As I touched on above, it has connotations of being “in charge” when the reality of this role not about being “in charge,” it’s about empowering.

Agent of Change (Change Agent): “Secret agent man, secret agent man…” Other than the obvious need for another gratuitous joke, this is a term we need to tackle as Change Agent has become a common term now. But what does it mean? I saw a great comic that had a person and death. The person said “Oh, no, it’s the Angel of Death.” To which Death replies “I ‘ve changed my name to Agent of Change.”

I don’t know, “change agent” just seems a bit too disruptive. It tends to  make me think of a less flattering term that I’ve been called in the past (for polite audiences we’ll call this term “Fecal Aggregator”). Change agent implies that things need to change, when sometimes you just need to tweak or adjust. To grab onto the Lean Startup parlance, change agent would seem to always imply “pivot” when sometimes you need to “persevere.”

Sweet suffering succotash! Where does that leave us? 

Yes, finding a name for what we do isn’t as easy as it looks. In fact I don’t have the answer (Put the slings and arrows away). What I do have is the next step in the exploration.

Of course if you’re reading this, you know I’ve styled myself as “The Gorilla Coach.” It works only because of the web site and the blog I’ve created over the last few years. Because of Hogarth, I have a great conversation starter when I answer people’s “what do you do” question with “I’m a Gorilla Talker.”

Thing is, I don’t think Gorilla Talker is something that will work on broad scale. For the limited nature of myself and this blog, it works. When coaching people, it works. When talking to someone in the 55,000 person company that is my day job, it kind of falls a little flat.

So…

Catalyst Agent / Catalyst Coordinator / Catalyst Coach:

The word Catalyst has some interesting definitions. Two, in particular, stands out to me.

  • “something that causes activity between two or more persons or forces without itself being affected.”
  • “a person whose talk, enthusiasm, or energy causes others to be more friendly, enthusiastic, or energetic.”

“Without itself being affected”: I like this! For one it implies I’m not using myself up. Too many projects have I poured my heart and soul into, only to be left sorely wanting in the end (or laid off in one case, despite the project being a complete success).  For a another, it means I’m not the focus. I’m helping others, not directing others.

“a person whose talk…”: I so want to be this person. That just sounds like the coolest job description in the world.

“What do you do?”

“I cause others to be friendly and enthusiastic.” It reminds me of a Manager Tools quote (which I shall now proceed to butcher) that goes something like “I’ll trade 90% expertise and 10% enthusiasm for 90% enthusiasm and 10% expertise any day.” If I can bring the best out of the team, company, project or product, then I’ve had a great day.

I just don’t know if I’m an Agent, Coordinator or a Coach. Should I be using a spy camera, holding a clip board or blowing a whistle? One thing I do know, my Twitter ID no longer fits me. So with a nod of thanks to the old, I welcome in JBC_GC as my new handle.

 

What do you think of being a Catalyst?

 

Note: All comments are moderated.

The Gorilla Manager’s Survival Guide to Going Agile

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“What do you mean I have to wait until the end of the sprint for a report?”

John gave a nod. “Uh huh, when we do the Sprint Review we’ll be have the Feature burn down charts, as well as demos of what’s been built and a report on any technical impediments.”

“But that’s not until the end of next week, I need to brief the VP on where Project Myrmidon stands.”

John looked truly apologetic. “I don’t have anything to report until the sprint is over. You’ve got the reports for the last two sprints and you know what we committed to for this sprint. Until we’re done, I can’t compile the external report. I’d just being making up a report right now, is that what you want?”

I sighed. “No, of course not.” In reality I did want him to make something up. I didn’t want to tell the VP he had to wait another week and a half to get his status report. The VP was scary and I didn’t like explaining to him why he had to wait for anything, even if it was the way the process worked. He was the kind of guy who didn’t want to wait for anything. He would say jump and expected you to phone him from orbit to ask if that was a high enough jump.

“Need anything else?” John’s question cut into my self misery. He was standing patiently in front of my desk. When I looked up at him he said, “Remember, I need to leave early today?”

I waved at him, “Oh, right. Go ahead.” John left me alone with my thoughts. This was the fourth time in two weeks he’s left early. I wondered if anything is wrong.

“He’s taking a Community Emergency Response training class. He wants to be more active in the community.” Hogarth’s deep voice cut through my thoughts and derailed the train I’d been on. The gorilla lumbered into the room, pausing only briefly to snap a branch off my fichus before he continued on to perch in the sun drenched window ledge.

“How do you know that?” I asked.

Hogarth shook his head, “Gorilla secret. Besides you’d know to if you were paying as much attention to your team as you do to your precious status reports.”

I glared at Hogarth. “What do you mean? I see my people every day. I know what’s going on with every project and where all the risks are. How can you say I’m not paying attention?” I waved out the door, “Heck the real problem is this damned agile roll out. Ever since it got going I have no idea what’s going on. Jake and I were just complaining about it over lunch. We don’t have the same control we used to, it’s driving us mad.”

“And yet you don’t know that Molly is engaged, Max at war with IT and John was taking CERT training.”

I blinked at Hogarth. “You mean I, like, have to talk to them ?” I felt a cold shudder run down my spine at the very thought of it.

Hogarth pointed the denuded fichus branch in my direction. “Let me ask you this. What reports to you, projects or people ?”

I stared at him like he’d just grown a second head. “What kind of question is that? Of course I have people reporting to me…” I closed my mouth with a snap.

“Oh…”

 

Good Managers make for Good Agile

Management has been the butt of jokes, derision and scorn pretty much since some Mesopotamian chieftain delegated a cattle raid to his incompetent son while briefing his best warrior to keep his son out of danger and really get the job done. For the butt of all the jokes it has been, Management has also been where many of the worlds greatest leaders have risen from. The Duke of Marlborough, the Duke of Wellington, General/ President Charles de Gaulle and General/President Dwight Eisenhower all came out of “middle management” positions and went on to help change the face of the world for their time.

Whether you love or hate management, whether you think agile/ lean will do away with management, the reality is right now management is still a pervasive part of our world. This means some fairly important things.

– Adoption of new ways of doing business is going to be a lot more successful with management support.
– Managers need to learn how to work in the agile/lean world.
– The previous two bullets are inexorably linked together.

In short, managers need to learn how to work with their people again. It is through helping the team that we will all succeed. Stop focusing on the work and focus on the people doing the work. Through this can managers become a key to making a better world.

Psst… That was the passionate call to action part.

Okay, great speech. Rah, rah, rah. But speeches don’t make change.

No, no they don’t. Which means you actually have to do something.

And now for the practical tools to rise to the call.

Enter Manager Tools
Manger Tools is a website, a series of podcasts and a very dedicated group of people. When I look back on how I made the shift from drone worker to change agent and leader I can point to two defining moments. One was taking a CSM course and finally “getting” agile. The other was discovering the Manager Tools podcasts.

Focused on the principles of being effective and giving actionable advice, the Manager Tools podcasts have helped me put my career on track, to be a better manager and I think to be a better person. The principles and lessons of Manager Tools helped to form my own personal belief that if you help individuals be more effective, they will help make a better team. A better team makes for a better project and a better project makes for a better product. Better products will lead to better businesses and I businesses built on these foundations will help lead us to a better world.

Now with over 500 podcasts, years of blog posts, and a huge community forum it can be daunting to know where to start. Fortunately, Manager Tools has this covered. I also have some additional MT podcasts that I highly recommend as critical must listens.

The Manager Tools Trinity:
In true Douglas Adams fashion, the trinity is made up of four components. It really did start out as a trinity at one time. Coaching became part of the mix a few years back and I think these days the people at Manager Tools tend to refer to this as the “basics.” One thing basic about them, is how basic it is to pick them up and start using them. For ease of listening, Manager Tools has bundled around 20 podcasts into a special “Manager Tools Basic” feed. It contains their core starting points, including the Trinity (all four parts).

 

One on Ones: Two key secrets sauces at play here. 1- Meeting with your directs once a week, like clockwork. If there is a conflict, reschedule. Do everything you can to hold it. 2- The format is ten, ten, ten. The first ten minutes is the direct talking about whatever they want. The second ten is the manager asking questions he wants answers to. The last ten minutes are to future development. Project Managers- You can use O3s as well. It just takes a couple of minor changes to make it a perfect meeting for working with your project team.

The Feedback Model: The Manager Tool’s Feedback is a lot like a one shot agile retrospective. It allows the manager to identify behaviors (good and bad) and provide a response to that behaviors impact. The most powerful part of the Feedback Model is it doesn’t look to correct what has happened. Like a good retrospective, feedback is looking forward to how things can be done better in the future. Encouragement, not punishment. Project Managers- There is a modified version of this that can work with your project team.

Delegating: We’re terrible at delegating. We don’t do it well. We often delegate the wrong things. We often (very often) don’t let go when we delegate. In short, we end up strung out over a massive string of responsibilities and create all sorts of problems, not the least of which is being a single point of failure. Let us not forget the great Dilbert wisdom of “If you make yourself irreplaceable you will never get promoted.”

Coaching: Yes, that’s right, managers should be coaches to the people on their teams. Mark Hortsman, of Manager Tools, says that one of the greatest signs of a successful manager is that he gets his people promoted. Helping your team grow, learn and prosper is a vital part to being a good manager. And like good coaches, the goal is not to lead or drive them there, it is to make the possibilities possible.

Jump Starting Internal Customer Relationships : This two part podcast is a must listen for anyone joining a new company, new department or new project. This is one of my first go to actions when brought in on a failing project. Few would argue against syncing up with your stakeholders. The Internal Customer Interview process takes this to the next level by giving you a standardized format and set of questions to ask all your stakeholders. Through the repetition of the same questions you create quantitative view of the situation.

The DISC Model in action: DISC is a quadrant based behavioral model. Having used it for several years now I can attest to it being a model that actually works as opposed to being a money maker for “specialists” who come in to “fix” your organization. You can get a full assessment online for about $30. Manager Tools has over thirty podcasts devoted to interacting with people based on the DISC system. Hands down this has been one of the most valuable tools I’ve picked up from Manager-Tools.

 

In conclusion, this is one series of podcasts that is worth going back to episode one and listening to them all. It didn’t just help my career, it gave it purpose.

Better people, better projects, better world.

The Gorilla Coach: A book review of Coaching Agile Teams, by Lyssa Adkins

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Coachin Agile Teams

 

“You’ve got to do something! We can’t keep going like this, the entire project is going to collapse in on itself.”
Eric certainly had a way of getting my attention. I had instant visions of red project dashboards and burn down charts flat lining like a patient in the ER. Eric was one of the canaries on the project. There are always those certain team members that reflect the state of the project or are the first to see a major issue. Like the miner’s canary of old, they are the first to notice or raise the issues and a smart manager learns to pay attention. These are not to be mistaken for the Chicken Littles, who can give a hypochondriac a run for their money. When a canary sings, you listen to their song.
I held up my hands and spoke in a calm tone. “Okay, Eric, calm down and tell me what the problem is. I’m sure we can get this addressed.”
Eric took a deep breath and paused for a moment, as if suddenly unsure he wanted to continue. I gave him my best supporting smile and waited.  Finally finding his voice he said, “It’s Greg, he smells.”
I blinked. “Smells?”
Eric nodded, perhaps a bit too energetically. “No one wants to pair program with him. Heck no one wants to be within six feet of him. It’s like a mouse crawled into his shirt and died. Given the last time he changed his shirt it could well have.”
I sat back in my chair, a frown threatening to crease my brow. “This can’t be happening to me,” I thought. My next thought was to look across the table again. If Brenda were sitting there, this would have been another “The sky is falling” moments and I could have dealt with that like all the other times the sky didn’t really fall. Only this was Eric, the most reliable barometer of the teams health available. It meant that either Eric had gone off the deep end or the problem was very real.
So now what? This wasn’t a slipped schedule, we didn’t have a shortage of test machines,  it wasn’t even the completely useless requirements or product manager owner was foisting on us. No, I was being asked to deal with someone’s smell.”
They didn’t cover this in project management training…
“What would coach do?”
I turned to cast a baleful look at Hogarth.
“This isn’t a football game.”
My gorilla gave a little nod. “Good thing too, cause you stink at football.”
“Hogarth you are not helping me solve this problem.”
He nodded again, a brilliant white smile splitting his face. “Nope, I’m not and you shouldn’t be either. Solving Eric’s problem isn’t going to help him solve it in the future, now is it?”
Dang… he was right.
BOOK REVIEW: COACHING AGILE TEAMS, By Lyssa Adkins
Summary:
This book had been recommended to me many times, by many people. It forms one of the core study books for PMI’s new agile certification and you’d be hard pressed to find a conversation on agile coaching that doesn’t reference this book or the author.
Like me, Lyssa Adkins is a recovering command and control project manager and this is one of the things that makes this book resonate for me. While many agile authors have always been on the revolutionary/evolutionary end of the innovation scale, Lyssa had worked in the trenches of traditional projects and speaks to all audiences. Whether you are an eccentric software coder, turned agile visionary, or a former art major, turned project manager, turned aspiring agile coach, this book will speak to you. Very importantly, it speaks right to project managers “in transition.” Based on the traditional roles that project managers have filled, the scrum master role often ends up being a place project managers end up gravitating to as they journey into agile (or are shoved feet first by events, company, etc.) so this book is a great asset to them.
With 302 practical pages of content, there is a lot to absorb. It is not an evening’s light reading. Some of the concepts and mental challenges they raised had me setting the book down so I could process. All in all, it took me several weeks to read the book as there was so much to absorb and my mind wasn’t ready for it all at once.  But there was no way I was not going to finish this book.
The book is broadly laid out into three sections and the first hint you have on what it takes to be a good coach is that two of the three sections have to do with you.
  • It Starts With You: Starting with the obvious “will I be a good coach?” question, this section lays down the ground work to open yourself up to what is needed for you to be a good coach. Along the way it teaches you a lot about yourself.
  • Helping the Team Get More for Themselves: This section covers six aspects of being an agile coach, from the high level mentor concepts to the details of how a coach can help resolve conflict in a team.
  • Getting More for Yourself: One of the things I truly appreciate about agile, is its stance on failure. Lyssa’s book is no different and this section tackles head on the mistakes you will make and that it is okay to make them as long as you learn from them. It touches on the journey and knowing when you finally get there (Hint- you never do).
The Good:
Approachable Style: Lyssa writes this book in a conversational tone and weaves in direct experience throughout the book. You constantly have a strong sense that she is speaking from her own hands-on experience and her light style makes absorbing the deep content a lot easier.
Failure is okay: She knows that the journey to being a coach is going to have its bumps and bruises and she makes that okay. Instead of feeling like you are facing an insurmountable journey to be an agile coach, she reassures you that the potholes are just part of the journey. The most wonderful experiences are not found in the well manicured aisles of a department store, they are found out in the wilds of the world.
Lots of practical tips: The book isn’t just theory and platitudes. She provides solid tips, actions and exercises. She also provides tailoring to help you deal with all aspects of an agile organization, not just the agile development team.
The Not So:
No punches pulled: This could arguably be in the good things, you just need to be aware about it. Lyssa doesn’t pull punches and she’s not going to white wash this. If you are not ready to let go of your control freak nature, this book will be hard to read. You’ll put it down more than once and walk away. You will also learn really fast if you really want to be an agile coach. It is not a job for everyone. I still want to be one, but this book certainly tested my mettle.
Broad base may not appeal: If you are a hardcore scrum master, who is totally focused in on the artifacts of scrum and only scrum, you may find this book to broad for your tastes. Lyssa comes off fairly agile agnostic. This book is about helping any team, in an agile way, and this may not be pure scrum enough for some. Again, this could be argued as a good thing. I would hazard a guess that is part of why it ended up on the PMI reading list.
The Bookshelf Index: (Where does this book when I am done reading it?)
In my computer bag: This book speaks so much to what I want to be and how I want to engage with teams that it has not left my computer bag since I started reading it. It has quickly become a well worn copy and I will continue to refer to it regularly for some time to come.
Joel Bancroft-Connors
The Gorilla Talker
Want me to talk to your gorilla? mailto:jbancroftconnors@gmail.com
You can follow me on twitter, @JBC_PMP

How to be a Gorilla Manager: In five easy steps

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Dear Hogarth,

I want to become project manager. Can you give me some advice on what to do?
Thanks,
– Aspiring cat herder
Dear Aspiring,
Run, run as far as you can.
Barring that, I recommend you have your head examined. I mean, seriously, if you do your job well no one will notice you. If the project fails, you’ll be standing right next to the product manager when they roll out the firing squad. Why would you want to put yourself through that?…
“Hogarth!”
My gorilla looked up from the keyboard, banana sized finger poised over the Return key. “What? Oh right, let me guess.” He sat back in my chair. Amid the creaking protests of my chair he did a disturbingly accurate imitation of me. “Hogarth! What on earth are you doing?” He grinned at me, “that about cover it?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. The pounding ache behind my eyes was threatening to burst out like some bad horror flick monster. “Yes, that covers it.”
Hogarth said, “good, then we have that covered. That was easy.”
“Hogarth…” I said menacingly.
He held up his hands. “Oh, right, what am I doing? I was just checking my email. Someone wanted some advice on becoming a project manager.”
I blinked, “you have email?”
“Well duh. It’s the 21st century, of course I have email.” He shook his head like I’d asked the craziest question ever.  Okay, maybe I did. Did I?
Shaking my head I tried a different tack. “You were giving advice on becoming a project manager?”
He nodded, “Yep, don’t.”
“Don’t?” I asked. “You do realize what I do for a living?”
Hogarth nodded, “Yep and that’s why I’m advising him not to.  You’re losing your hair, you’ve got an ulcer, and heaven knows that no one appreciates your work. Why on earth would anyone want to be a project manager?”
“Because I like helping people!”
Hogarth pointed a paw at the screen, “Okay, help him…”
And once again I had been Hogarthed.
Advice for the aspiring Project Manager (Scrum Master or Coach)
What advice would I give to a young project manager? While the urge to advise him or her to “run, run very fast,” is fairly strong, it is also entirely unhelpful. And I really do like to help people, something I think makes me a good project manager, scrum master, coach, leader, etc.
So if I were to be giving advice to Josh Nankivel‘s students, what would I say? There are so many pithy, trite, over used things I could say. I could call on the masters of PM and just quote them. I could call on the masters of business, military or the circus and quote them.
And doing that would do two things. 1- Put the students to sleep, 2- Absolutely be nothing about me and the passion that makes me successful.
So my advice would be what works for me. Be a leader.
“Oh, right, that’s real helpful.”
You’re right, that falls into the “pithy but true” category. The question is, how to be a leader? How to move from managing to being the visionary, the inspirer, the front of the charge or the wind beneath their wings.
For myself, it is following five personal principles. These are principles I’ve come to hold over my life and drive how I live my life and do my job.  It may not work for  everyone, but if I’m going to give advice, I should damn well have some passion for what I’m advising.
“So what are those five principles?”
Right, good question. Below are my five guiding principles and a short explanation. After presenting them at the PMI Silicon Valley annual symposium, in October of 2011, I began referring to them as the “Gorilla Equation,” the five “x” factors that make a good managers. 
The Gorilla Equation
  1. People, Not projects.
  1. Communication is 100% of your job.
  2. Process is a tool, not a roadblock.
  3. There is no, one, right way.
  4. All roads lead back to the customer

People, not projects: This is the foundation principle in the Gorilla Equation. Without this foundation the rest lack a structure to sit on. If I focus on helping the team become a high performing one, the team will do better. A better team leads to a better product and I firmly believe this combination will lead to a better world. 

I spend every day of my job trying to make myself obsolete by enabling the team and helping them grow.

Communication is 100% of your job: PMI says communication makes up about 80% of a PMs job. I say it’s 100%. Think about what a project manager does. You’d be hard pressed to find anything that doesn’t involve some manner of communication.  Not only is it 100% of your job, but you need to be adding value to every communication you are involved in. You are not an operator, you are more like the chief operation officer for your team. It’s your job to facilitate all the communication and enhance it along the way.

Process is a Tool, not a roadblock: Don’t ever let process take control of your project. If a process does not contribute value to the end user/ end goal, then look at dropping it,  streamline it, or focus it. Make sure your process is not subverting principle 1 or 5.

There is no, one right way: If I want to go from San Francisco to New York there are dozens of options (Different airlines, driving, train, cruise ship, even biking) and any one of them could be the right way for me, depending on my goals and constraints. Anytime you here “That’s the way we have to do it” ask “Why?” If something has to be done, be open to if there is an easier way to do it. Inspect and Adapt.

All roads lead back to the customer: Where “People, not projects” is the foundation principle. “All roads” is the guiding mantra. Rooted in my original high tech job in customer support its been like that beacon in the night that lost ships yearn for. If you can’t map what you are doing to some impact to the customer, then you should be asking why you are doing it.

Five principles, one result. Better me, better teams, better product, better world.
Joel Bancroft-Connors
The Gorilla Talker
Want me to talk to your gorilla? mailto:jbancroftconnors@gmail.com
You can follow me on twitter, @JBC_PMP

The Winning Gorilla: A Book Review of "The Lazy Winner"

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“Yeah, sure no problem. I can get that done.”
I hung up the phone, a cheerful smile on my face, and turned back to my computer. Only to be faced with a staggering to do list awash in the red of late deliverables. Why the heck did I just say yes to another deliverable? I was already behind on a half dozen and the list of commitments just for this week was enough to keep me busy through to the new year. What was I thinking?
“You weren’t”
Sigh… And here comes the gorilla to tell me the error of my ways.
Hogarth perched on my desk, causing it to groan in protest at this 800 pound bulk. “There’s a wonderful word in your English language. You might be familiar with it. It’s the word ‘No.”
“Yeah, yeah I know about no.”
Hogarth pointed his banana at me, “But do you know how to use no?”
“Of course I know!”
“Really? Can you tell me the status of the Glitteratti regression testing?”
“At this time QA has not published their report so I don’t have an up to date status.”
Hogarth shook his head, “That didn’t sound like a no. Way to many syllables. What’s the status of the Glitteratti regression?”
I gritted my teeth, “I don’t have that status right now, I should have it…”
Hogarth waved his cantaloupe sized hand in front of me, “You know, never mind. I actually came in here to ask if I could borrow your car. I saw this great move on an old Dukes of Hazard that I want to try. So can I borrow your car?”
“NO!” I replied without thinking.
Hogarth smiled broadly. Leaning over he patted me on the shoulder, “see there, I knew you could say no!”
BOOK REVIEW: The Lazy Winner, By Peter Taylor
It’s not often I’m on the leading edge of a book. It took me close to twenty years to read 7 Habits and my last review was on the ten year old Good to Great. So the ability to read a book when it first comes out is something I take as a great joy.
Now I do need to give the disclaimer that I didn’t pay for The Lazy Winner. I received a complementary copy with the agreement that after reading it, I would write a review for it on Amazon. That said, being the gorilla talker means I’m not about to pull punches just because I didn’t pay the cover price.
Summary:
The Lazy Winner steps beyond Peter’s first book, The Lazy Project Manager and seeks to provide helpful guidance for anyone trying to survive the daily grind of professional life. The Lazy PM was chock full of useful tips and techniques for the project manager and still sits in a prominent spot on my desk bookshelf. The Lazy Winner is both targeted at a wider audience and more narrow in its approach.
The book is strictly focused on you and how you can succeed in the work environment without killing yourself. And it is not a book that tries to promise the world. In fact Peter spends the first couple of pages trying to convince you not to read the book. You have to want to change to change.
The key to the book is five questions and then how you answer and define them:
Do I want to do this piece of work, job or task? Even if I do want to do it, do I need to do it?
Is the potential result or outcome worth my effort?
Do I have to do it myself?
If I have to do it then what is the shortest path to the point of success?
What exactly is the point of success and at what stage will I just be wasting time?
Revisiting the Pareto rule, which he first references in The Lazy PM, Peter then uses these five questions to help the reader learn how to channel what he actually does to the most important and value added items. And unlike many self help books, in this vein, he doesn’t try whitewash away the stuff you don’t do. There is a large factor to ensuring things don’t get dropped, even as you do less, but more productive work.
Peter even talks about the inertia against change. “But it’s so easy to just keep doing it this way…” Using some of his signature simple graphics he walks the reader through how to examine the value of change versus not change.
The Good:
This makes sense: Peter has a conversational reading style. Having listened to his podcasts, I could easily imagine him reading the words to me. He mixes a simple writing style, humor and just the right amount of formatting to make The Lazy Winner the kind of book you say “I’ll just read one more page and then I’ll put it down.”
Questions of power: I’ve understood the Pareto rule and I learned the hard way I don’t have to do everything myself. And even with that under my belt, the five questions make a wonderful level of sense and will be something I refer back to time and again.
Footnotes of laughter: Read the footnotes. I usually am one to skip footnotes as way to much detail but you’d be the poorer if you do that with this book. Read the footnotes for the information but more importantly for the humor.
The Bad:
Just a snack: The PDF copy comes in at just 162 pages with the Appendix (a very useful appendix) starting at page 121. Peter packs a fair amount into the book, but I can’t help but feel I’m reading the cliffs notes of summary copy of the book. Everything section left me looking for more. Then again, perhaps this was on purpose. If you give to much help in a self help book, people might not think for themselves. In the end, like the Chinese food Peter loves so well, this book left me hungry for more thirty minutes after finishing.
I’m ready for my close up: I love the cover to The Lazy Project Manager. It is simple and compelling. The kind of cover that catches your eye on a bookshelf or in an e-catalog. While the photo of Peter is a good one, I think it would be a lot better as the “About the author” picture. A laughing man, not looking at the camera doesn’t sell me “Winner.” If I didn’t know who Peter was, I might be inclined to say “Wow, what an ego, he used his own face.” I’d rather see art in the same style as The Lazy PM. A stylized checkered flag over a man racing a desk or something.
Ow, ow, my wallet: $23 US for the print edition of the book feels a little steep. It’s a smaller book than his first and still going for a similar price. Perhaps I’m just out of touch with prices but if I were to heft the print version, in a Barnes and Noble, I’d think it didn’t weigh what a $23 book should weigh. The Kindle version though is $9.99 and that’s in the reasonable (for Amazon) e-book range.
The Bookshelf Index:
The Lazy Winner won’t be joining The Lazy Project Manager on my desk bookshelf. It has some valuable insights, but the core meat are those magic questions and a couple of other points. I’ll be creating a one page of those to pin on my wall and the book will be filed away in my reference stack.
Well worth the read, but not something you won’t be reaching for again and again.  This book is perfect for electronic reading. Short, easy to read and you won’t be wanting to flip through the pages to refer to it like you might with The Lazy Project Manager.
NOTE: Passing on a shameless plug from Peter Taylor. The Lazy Winner is currently (Dec 14, 2011) free on the Kindle in the US Amazon shop. Take advantage of his largess while it lasts.
Joel Bancroft-Connors
The Gorilla Talker Project Manager
Want me to talk to your gorilla? Send me an email
You can follow me on twitter, @JBC_PMP