The Man Who Saved the Union: A Q&A with Author H.W. Brands

Pulitzer Prize nominee H.W. Brands’ latest book, The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace, is a masterful biography of the Civil War general and two-term president who saved the Union twice, on the battlefield and in the White House, holding the country together at two critical turning points in our history. Brands is also the author of Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin.

Thanks Mr. Brands for taking time from your busy schedule to answer a few questions.

 

Q. Why did you write The Man Who Saved the Union?

A. I wanted to tell the story of how the Union almost fell apart in the early 1860s and how it was put back together after the Civil War. I also wanted to tell the story of an important American who came to fame for being a soldier. Grant fit my needs on both scores.

A Review of Two Must Read Books for All Parents and Educators

For twenty-five years Jonathan Kozol has followed the lives of many inner-city children and documented their struggles, tragedies and successes in his new book Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America. These are children who live in horrid condition and are placed in disadvantaged educational institutions. The most disturbing part of these stories is that these kids have grown up in the United States.

Meanwhile, conventional wisdom believes that cognitive development and stimulation in children, especially before school age, is the major factor in determining their future educational success. In How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, author Paul Tough has challenged these thoughts and provides awareness of the important role that character plays in the development of children.

Both of these books provide valuable lessons and insight into actions we need to take to ensure all children are able to reach the full potential of their natural abilities.

Project Management Lessons from a Magician

I recently finished reading Alex Stone’s intriguing new book Fooling Houdini: Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks, and the Hidden Powers of the Mind in which he traces his steps along his path of becoming a magician while providing interesting insights into the world of magicians and mentalists. I had no idea as to the numerous magic societies and annual magic tournaments held all over the world!

You may be asking yourself how a book about magic could possibly be related to project management. Although I am sure most experienced project managers would agree that at times it seems like magic to make a project come together, there is no magic to project management. In fact after reading this book it is clear that we should never introduce any magical tools or techniques into our project management processes. On the other hand both magicians and project managers need to step back from their tools and techniques and remember it is critical to make their audience care. Let’s start by looking at the technique of misdirection.

The Art of Misdirection
You may not be surprised to learn that magic is not really magic at all, but a series of very clever and well planned techniques. Magicians who perform feats such as making objects disappear and then reappear are practicing the art of misdirection. Misdirection is performed by capturing the audience’s focus on a particular object or other distraction while the true ‘magic’ is happening somewhere else. Many psychological studies have shown that when we focus on a particular task our brains can become blind to the other stimulus, especially visual.

An Economist Gets Lunch by Tyler Cowen

Admittedly I am not and will likely will never be classified as a foodie. In fact I am so far removed from foodies that I did not even know that the term existed. However this deficiency of mine in no way impaired my enjoyment of Tyler Cowen’s new book An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies. Cowen is a professor of economics at George Mason University and the author of Discover Your Inner Economist and Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World; apparently he also appreciates a good meal!

The book covers a wide range of topics from how to find the best (and most affordable) places at which to dine to the past and future of agriculture. It is very clear that Cowen has a strong appetite for his work and based on extensive research, including traveling to and dining at locations all over the world, has created an essential guide for foodies and an interesting read for the rest of us.

The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty by Dan Ariely

The good news is that I only recommend Dan Ariely’s new book The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone---Especially Ourselves to those of us who lie or cheat. The bad news is that this immoral group includes all of us, yes even you… and your family… and your co-workers… and your elderly neighbors… and your academic instructors, politicians (how shocking!), dentists, doctors… you get the idea.

While Dishonesty will certainly not be considered the “feel good” book of the summer, it represents a very important work in the field of behavioral economics which is the culmination of dozens of experiments and studies that have been performed by the author and his fellow researchers.

For the very few of you who may not be familiar with Ariely, he is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavior Economics at Duke University and the author of two past best sellers; Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality .

In Dishonesty, Ariely answers some very difficult questions such as; why/how do people act dishonestly and how can we prevent these acts. He starts by exploring the Simple Model of Rational Crime (SMORC) which attempts to explain the how we decide if and when we will act dishonestly. The premise of the book is that many factors and situations need to be taken into account to understand when and why people are dishonest and the bulk of the chapters are dedicated to exploring specific situations.

City of Scoundrels: A Q&A with author Gart Krist

Gary Krist's latest book, City of Scoundrels: The 12 Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago, masterfully tells the story of 12 volatile days in the life of Chicago, when an aviation disaster, a race riot, a crippling transit strike, and a sensational child murder roiled a city already on the brink of collapse. Krist is also the author of The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalanche.

You can learn more about this book by reading my review.

Thanks Gary for taking time from your busy schedule to answer a few questions.

Q: Why did you write City of Scoundrels?

A: I wanted to write about a city under extraordinary stress.  The evolution of any city, particularly a city of immigrants, involves lots of conflict, with various ethnic, racial, and class-based groups competing against each other for power and prominence.  Often, this kind of competition works to the city’s advantage, channeling energies in constructive directions.  But 1919 in Chicago was one of those times when the energies of competition turned destructive, and instead of working to build the city, started tearing it apart.

Q: The book opens with a dramatic recounting of the Wingfoot air express disaster on July 21^st, 1919. I think most readers will be as surprised as I was to learn of this disaster. Why do you think this disaster, the first aviation disaster in American history, is mostly forgotten and what impact did this disaster ultimately have on aviation travel in the beginning of the 20^th century?

City of Scoundrels by Gary Krist

Ever had one of those weeks when it seems like everything that can go wrong did go wrong? I am sure most, if not all of us, can answer yes to this question, but it would be very difficult to identify when as many situations went wrong as they in Chicago during July, 1919. These situations are all recounted in Gary Krist’s new book City of Scoundrels: The 12 Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago. Krist is the also the author of The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalanche.

Krist opens the book with the dramatic retelling of the crash of the Wingfoot Air Express on July 21^st of 1919. The author provides personal accounts of several victims and survivors and how they came to their fate on that day, including the tale of the unfortunate Carl Otto. As the book unfolds we are taken inside the courtroom during the coroner’s inquiry as representatives from Goodyear arrive to take financial responsibility as they defended against charges of negligence.

Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson

For all dedicated macro economists and anyone who wants some good news as to the future of the United State’s economy, Why Nations Fail is a book that I highly recommended for you. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty is a new book by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson. Daron Acemoglu is the Killian Professor of Economics at MIT and James Robinson is the David Florence Professor of Government at Harvard University.

This delightful book is the most extensively researched and easy to follow ‘pure’ economics book that I have read. I classify this as a ‘pure’ economics books as opposed to the recent and popular behavioral economics books, such as those by Steven Levitt (see Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything), which themselves are also well researched and written but focus on topics more familiar to a larger number  of readers. The goal of Why Nations Fail is to explain just that; why some nations fail while others succeed. This goal is obtained by providing very simple concepts supported by an abundance of historical and modern day case studies.

Don’t worry if you are an economics novice, Why Nations Fail does not require any pre-requisite degrees, classes or knowledge of economics!

The book opens with a brief account of the recent events in Egypt. As we are all aware, the citizens of Egypt have not been happy with their plight and have recently risen up to precipitate changes within the government. The interesting question that only time will answer is will a regime change in Egypt lead to any increased prosperity for its citizens? This book explores the factors that will determine the fate of Egyptians.

The Man Without a Face by Masha Gessen

As the 2012 Presidential elections are gearing up consider this scenario; the sitting US Vice-President leaves office and is replaced by an obscure government official about which little is known. The President then steps aside and the relatively unknown VP is now sitting on the Oval Office. The new President begins to methodically revert the country back to less democratic days; say by removing women’s right to vote and eliminating the direct election of Senators until more and more power is concentrated at 1500 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Does this sound like the farfetched plot of a bad movie? Unfortunately not. An eerily similar scenario has played itself out in Russia starring Vladimir Putin according to the new book The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin by Masha Gessen. Gessen, a well-established author and journalist and citizen of both Russia and the United States, has written what is likely her most aggressive and controversial work.

Admitting to myself that I am not at all familiar with the former and now again President of Russia I was interested in learning how unlikely his rise to power truly was. The one shortcoming of the book is that Gessen is not able to fully explain, which is likely due to a lack of clear, reputable information, Putin’s rise from humble beginnings to the leadership of the country. This shortcoming is quickly overlooked because the book paints a very vivid and frightening picture of recent developments in Russia during the Putin regime.

Island of Vice: A Q&A with author Richard Zacks

Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York by Richard Zacks, is also the author of The Pirate Coast: Thomas Jefferson, the First Marines, and the Secret Mission of 1805 and The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd.

Island of Vice tells the fascinating and often funny story of when young Theodore Roosevelt was appointed police commissioner of New York City, and had the astounding gall to try to shut down the brothels, gambling joints, and after-hours saloons. See my book review here.

Thanks Richard for taking time from your busy schedule to answer a few questions.

Q: Why did you write Island of Vice?

A: Among other reasons, I wrote it so that I would be paid to research vice in 1890s NYC. I had started a novel and realized that there was a better non-fiction book idea here. I loved finding authentic 1890s details about brothels, etc. and also watching this strange experiment in municipal government: Tammany Hall's pay-as-you-go vs. Roosevelt's righteous by-the-book crusade. Ultimately neither approach in its most extreme form is feasible.

Q: In the book you relate how after Roosevelt left the Police Commissioner position, New York City regressed further back into a world of vice. How much of the blame for this should be placed on Roosevelt’s successors?

Fanatic Risk Acceptance: A Tragic Tale One Century Later

I found it very ironic that last week I was co-facilitating a session on Risk Management as part of the Project Management Institute Upstate New York Chapter’s PMP Exam Prep class. As defined in the Project Management Institute’s Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) one of the inputs to the Plan Risk Management process is Enterprise Environmental Factors.  The PMBOK defines this input as:

“The enterprise environmental factors that can influence the Plan Risk Management process include, but are not limited to, risk attitudes and tolerances that describe the degree of risk that an organization will withstand.”

As part of the exam prep session we review the need to understand which project constraints (time, cost, scope, or quality) organizations and sponsors are most sensitive, to be used as an input in the process of ranking project risks. For example if you are working on a project which your organization’s CEO or state’s Governor has publically announce a date for deployment, your project will be more sensitive to risks that would impact the schedule.

Situations Matter: A Q&A with author Sam Sommers

Situations Matter: Understanding How Context Transforms Your World is the highly acclaimed book by Sam Sommers which provide an exploration of the invisible forces influencing your life-and how understanding them can improve everything you do. I recently had a chance to connect with Sam and ask him a few questions about his insightful book.

Thanks Sam for taking time from your busy schedule to answer these questions.

Q: Why did you write Situations Matter?

A: My goal in writing the book was to bring renewed attention to just how influential context is in our daily lives: the ways in which it shapes how we think, what we do, and who we are as people. I know it seems like an obvious premise-- of course the situations we're in matter. But we don't come close to grasping the full extent to which this is the case or just how far-reaching the implications of this conclusion really are. My argument in the book is that by learning about the science of how contexts shape human nature we become more effective people across a wide range of domains, both professionally (e.g., working in groups, managing people, negotiations) and personally (e.g., parenting, social relationships, how we think about the self). So it's very much a story about the psychology of daily life, which makes it useful as well as fun-- it's an integration of behavioral science, pop culture analysis, personal anecdote, and humor, all in the effort to paint a more complete picture of what makes people tick.

The Start-Up of You by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha

Are you an entrepreneur? Yes you are, or should be thinking of yourself as an entrepreneur if not already doing so is the case that Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha make in their new book The Start-up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career.  Hoffman, a former employee of Google and Paypay, is more widely recognized as a co-founder to Linked-In, the largest professional social network on the internet. Ben Casnocha is an accomplished author and entrepreneur.

The authors open the book by describing how much the world of work has changed in the last generation. Because company pension plans are now rarer then unassisted triple plays, more and more senior employees are postponing retirement which ultimately results in fewer opportunities for managers to continue their climb up the corporate ladder. Additionally fewer companies are able to provide their employees with training they need to make them more marketable.

Island of Vice by Richard Zacks

Who is “Ted-dy” Roos-e-velt?

First in war, first in peace.

First to reform the New York Police.

This is how Theodore Roosevelt, then a New York City Police Commissioner, was greeted by a thousand University of Chicago students before giving a speech on George Washington’s birthday. The ironic revelation of this greeting, as noted by Richard Zacks in his new book Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York, is that at this time Roosevelt was more popular outside New York City than within the city he was cleaning up. Zacks is the author of several books including; The Pirate Coast: Thomas Jefferson, the First Marines, and the Secret Mission of 1805 and The Pirate Hunter.

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

How much thinking is involved when you get into your car and drive back out of your driveway? Unless it is one of your first few times performing this activity then you are not likely to be pulling up memories of other times you have backed out of your driveway nor are you consciously making various decisions such as opening the car door, turning the key, pressing on the break and so on. Instead our brains are running on auto-pilot because these activities have become habits. This is one of the most important concepts regarding habits that readers will come across in The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, which is the highly acclaimed, bestselling book by Charles Duhigg.

Don’t Get Fooled Twice

Much has been written regarding how to conduct post-project assessments with the goal of gathering best practices and lessons learned. In future blogs I will add my own ideas and experiences regarding this critical process as well. But before we get there, I don’t think near enough has been written (or has stuck with us) regarding how to make sure an organization doesn’t learn the same lesson multiple times. Unfortunately I have seen this happen on too many occasions in the past, so here are some of my tips to prevent an organization from getting fooled twice.

Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World's Greatest Companies by Jim Stengel

Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World's Greatest Companies is a new book by Jim Stengel that provides a detailed review of how creating a stong brand ideal is correlated with long term organizational success, along with providing steps for implementing and maintianing a strong brand idea. I found this book to be an intriguing meeting of Jim Collins’ Good to Great (business success factors) and Martin Lindstrom’s Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy(study of neuromarketing). Unlike the Collins’ “Great” series of books which identify successful companies and then draws conclusions on what made them great, Stengel set out to prove that building a strong brand ideal is correlated to organizational success. The author approaches this goal by providing results of his research and several case studies which show the dramatic impacts of building or re-building a strong brand ideal.

Multipliers: A Q&A with author Liz Wiseman

Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman demonstrates how Multipliers can have a resoundingly positive and profitable effect on organizations—getting more done with fewer resources, developing and attracting talent, and cultivating new ideas and energy to drive organizational change and innovation. I recently had a chance to connect with Liz and ask her a few questions about her bestselling book.

Thanks Liz for taking time from your busy schedule to answer these questions.

Q: In the "Instill Ownership and Accountability" section of Multipliers, you recommend letting people remain accountable for their actions and experience consequences. This is a message I experience difficulty in applying since typical management training says that managers should protect their staff. Under what situation, if any, do you believe managers should attempt to protect their staff from the consequences of their actions?

A: This question is at the heart of the art of good management.  It is certainly naive to suggest that managers should just let their people fail and experience the sting of real learning.  But, I find that in working with management teams on this question, they find that there is far more room for experimentation that they initially thought.  Here's a quick mental exercise:   Take out two pieces of paper.  On one, make a list of everywhere it is OK to let someone live out a mistake or fail. On the other, make a list of where it isn't OK and you need to intervene.  Focus on the criteria.  Challenge yourself by making the second list no more than half as long as the first list.  My guess is that two things will happen:

1. You will see that there is a lot more room to experiment that you might feel and

2. You will develop a short set of criteria that you can use to recognize when you need to step in. 

Typically this criteria is something like, "when it is business ending, life ending, or career ending (for them or you!)."  Often the criteria for when it is OK to let failure happen sounds like this: "when the opportunity for learning is bigger than the cost to the business." 

Doing this exercise as a management team can be a powerful way to shape the culture and the environment for learning and performance.

The art of management comes in finding this right balance.  When is the mistake too costly and might seriously jeopardize the business or the person?  I like to think of this as finding the right size wave — one where someone will learn from their mistake and not be swept out to sea!  Check out my new Right Size Wave video for the full story.

Lean Project Management: A Q&A with author Larry Leach

Lean Project Management: Eight Principles For Success by Larry Leach takes you through all of the steps to plan and execute projects using the exciting new Lean and Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) methods. I recently had a chance to connect with Larry and ask him a few questions about his latest book.

Thanks Larry for taking the time from your busy schedule to address these questions.

 
Q: One of the goals of Lean Project Management (LPM) is to eliminate waste in projects and as you note in your book, one of the biggest wastes is initiating projects that produce goods/services that do not meet customer needs. Along those lines I have rarely encountered organizations that follow a formal process to review in-flight projects and were willing to kill projects that were not on the path to meeting customer needs. Why do you think organizations are unwilling to kill in-flight project and how should we address this issue?

A: My direct experience isn't with product development projects where this issue predominates although I have run into cases where projects shouldn't have started in the first place. The problem with unwillingness to kill projects may relate to some well-known psychological phenomena called the "Sunk Cost Fallacy" and the "Endowment Effect". One way I can see to overcome it is with periodic reviews to specific criteria by people who have no history with the projects and an explicit evaluation method that only allows them to assess the project as if it were a new investment to start at the time of the evaluation.

The 5 Levels of Leadership by John C. Maxwell

The Five Levels of Leadership: Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential is the latest book by John C. Maxwell. Maxwell is the author of many books on communication and leadership including Everyone Communicates, Few Connect and How Successful People Think: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life.

In 5 Levels, Maxwell provides an overview of his five levels of leadership, which are:

1. Position
2. Permission
3. Productivity
4. People Development
5. Pinnacle

The book begins with an assessment that can be used to determine at which level of leadership you are currently performing. It includes questions for yourself and others to answer about your leadership skills. The bulk of the book covers each of the steps in separate sections. Each section contains a detailed review along with both the upsides and downsides of each level.

How Situations Matter when Developing a Productive Project Team

Situations Matter: Understanding How Context Transforms Your World is the highly acclaimed book by Sam Sommers which explains the many ways in which situations influence our thoughts and behaviors. I believe that understanding these situational concepts are invaluable tools that a Project Manager can use to develop a productive project team.

The key concepts presented in Situations Matter are:
· WYSISYG (What You See Is What You Get)
· Help Wanted
· Go with the Flow
· You’re Not the Person You Thought You Were
· Love
· Hate

For more details on the book please refer to my review.

Ironically what I have taken away from Sommers’ writing is that in order to develop a successful project team we first create a new ‘in-group’ project crowd to eliminate biases and bring the team together but then second we need to establish individual identities to keep each person from falling prey to the crowd mentality and paralyzing group norms.

A Quiet Book Review: Susan Cain’s Extraordinary Look into the Importance of Introverts

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking is a new book by Susan Cain which delves deeply into the world of introverts. After reading many very positive reviews of the book I, being an introvert myself, had high expectations for this book. Without a doubt Quiet met my high expectations and much more. This is a must have book for anyone who is an introvert or needs to interact with introverts including; spouses, children or co-workers. This wonderful book provided many insights into my own behaviors but also provided me with a practicable guide to working with project teams. Additionally, my wife, a special education teacher, finds the material very appropriate for teachers with introverted students in their class – which in reality would be any teacher.

The book is divided into four parts:

Part 1: The Extrovert Ideal – Covers the rise and myths of extrovert leadership in our society

Part 2: Your Biology, Your Self? – Reviews the biological difference between introverts and extroverts and the resulting impacts

Part 3: Do all Cultures Have an Extrovert Idea? – Explores the differences in views of the extrovert ideal in American and Asia

Part 4: How to Love, How to Work – Provides life lessons for dealing with introverts

What follows are just some of the highlights from each section.

Part 1: The Extrovert Ideal
One of the most interesting aspects of this section is how extroverts came to be seen more prominently in the American society. Cain expertly traces the rise of extroverts in America and offers insights into why other countries view extroverts less prominently.

We are then allowed to follow the author as she visits the extrovert havens of a high energy Anthony Robbins seminar and Harvard Business School. Not surprisingly we don’t tend to find many introverts at either gathering. Along the way Cain lets us in on some research that does surprise us – group brainstorming sessions are less productive, in terms of idea quality and quantity, than individual brain storming. These findings have significant implications for business and project managers.

Cain also shows the impacts of the new open office layouts which are becoming more popular in business settings. The impacts are not the anticipated positive ones to increase collaboration but are found to instead increase anxiety and employee turnover. Oops!

Part 2: Your Biology, Your Self?

Part 2 is where we jump into the biology of introverts and extroverts and resulting ramifications of not listening to introverts. This section begins with a clarification of the difference between temperament and personality. Cain reveals how research has shown that our introvert/extrovert temperaments as teenagers and adults can be predicted when we are only four months old.

Of more consequence we begin to understand the situations where introverts can be both better leaders and negotiators than their extroverted counterparts. Cain also explores the Winner’s Concept which plagues many extroverts and had a hand in the financial recession of 2008. This section makes me want to make sure an introvert is managing my financial investments!

Most importantly for introverts we learn how to better deal with the made for extrovert situations we dread so much; such as when we need to make small talk with groups and give presentations. Quiet contains wonderful tools to help introverts survive these challenging situations.

Part 3: Do all Cultures Have an Extrovert Idea?

In this section Cain provides a brief but informative comparison between the American and Asian cultures. This section and chapter is a helpful guide for creating better relationships with Asian co-workers.

Part 4: How to Love, How to Work
Cain saves the best for last! In the final section, we learn how can better live, love and work as, and with, introverts and importantly for teachers and parents, how to best facilitate young introverts in their learning and development.

For me this section explained why I have a hard time following my wife’s conversation at dinner and why I should never refer to my daughter, or anyone for that matter, as being ‘shy’. In addition we learn how to assist our introvert children with noisy settings such as play dates.

The insights into questions that parents should and should not ask of their kids after school, such as never ask the general question ‘How was your day?’, can also be applied to my work as a project manager when interacting with team members.

Conclusion

Simply put, Quiet is a very well researched and written book about the life of introverts. It is a must read for anyone who is or associated with introverts. I expect in some cases this book could be a life changer for many introverts.

Many kudos and thanks to Susan Cain for writing such a helpful and thought provoking book. Keep up the excellent work and championing for us introverts!

Situations Matter by Sam Sommers: A Review

Situations Matter: Understanding How Context Transforms Your World is a new book by Sam Sommers whose goal is to demonstrate how situations influence our thoughts and behaviors. The book more than accomplishes this goal by also providing techniques to interpret situations that are influencing behaviors and providing techniques to better respond to these situations.

The author starts by recounting an experience in which he and his wife missed a connecting flight and how he interpreted the situation to negotiate a hotel voucher from the airlines customer service agent. In this case the author explains how he considered the situation in which the agent was operating to successfully frame his request. The lesson is that the agent is not a heartless ogre who did not want to assist the stranded travelers but instead an amicable person who was put in a tough situation by the airline. This discussion is very well aligned with the powerful negotiation techniques presented by Stuart Diamond in Getting More: How to Negotiate to Achieve Your Goals in the Real World.

Sommers then discusses why, when presented with three game show hosts to tutor our child, we would immediately pick a certain one since he is viewed as more knowledgeable based on the game show that he hosts.

The remainder of the book covers several specific situational topics as I outline below.

WYSISYG – What you see is what you get. In this chapter, Sommers explains how we respond to what we see and discusses why we do not typically analyze and interpret the specific situation. In particular there is a discussion on how westerners will focus on a main object in a picture while those from eastern cultures look at the entire picture- frame and all! The most interesting analogy I found in this section was comparing the 2006 Olympics Opening Ceremony in Atlanta with the 2008 Olympics Opening Ceremony in China. As you may recall the 2008 games in China opened with 2008 people playing the drums while the 2006 games in Atlanta opened with a single performer – Celine Dion. Interesting insight indeed!

Help Wanted – In this chapter Sommers explores the perplexing reasons of why people in crowds will not assist those in need. Many real life examples along with results of studies (including the famous Good Samaritan study conducted at Princeton University) demonstrate that we will shirk responsibility when we are in the mix of a crowd as opposed to being alone.

Sommers also provides his insights onto the infamous lack of crowd response to the extended assault on Kitty Genovese in Queens during 1964. This is the classic case study of crowds which analyzed in many other books include Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point. Overall this chapter is an impressive synopsis as to why crowds affect our responses and behaviors.

Go with the Flow – This section introduces the Crows Whisperer aka ‘Super Fan’. This is the guy at sporting events who gets you to break out of the norms and scream passionately for your team. The most important take a ways from this chapter are techniques that can help you break yourself and others from the crowd affect that paralyze us during emergencies.

You are Not Who You Think You Are – In this section, Sommers presents evidence that we not only view others differently given the situation, but we also view ourselves differently. The results of several research experiments show that depending on our location and context we will identify ourselves differently. The author also gives great advice on how we should view ourselves as opposed to how many ‘self help’ experts try to convince us to view ourselves. Overall this is a well written and very insightful chapter for understanding how we view ourselves.

Love and Hate – The final two chapter address how and when we love and hate are both influenced by situations. In the love section Sommers outlines the situational influences that affect who we end up choosing to date and marry as opposed to the traits we seek in a mate.

In my opinion, the chapter on Hate is the most important in the book. Finally, someone has addressed why we have a hard time initially distinguishing people within different ethnic backgrounds. This is a critical concept for anyone to understand when they interact and work with people who we do not classify within one of our ‘in groups’. This section also provides useful lessons for Project Managers who need to manage a team that consists of different groups, organizations or backgrounds.

My conclusion is this is a great book for helping to remind us that when viewing and judging the actions of others we need to consider their situation. It’s main strength is that it also provides insights and strategies for dealing with the potential harm of crowd affects along with overcoming biases, both our own and others.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who interacts with other people. For further reading on these topics I also recommend reviewing the author’s blog.

Check out other reviews on Amazon<<<

Your ‘One Click’ Review of Richard Brandt’s Amazon.com book

One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com is a new book by Richard Brandt which delivers an overview of Amazon.com and its founder Jeff Bezos. Although this is a well written overview on both subjects, in my opinion these are both amazing stories that deserve their own more complete books.

Brandt starts with an overview on the background and upbringing of Jeff Bezos. It was interesting to learn of the technical achievements that Jeff attained during his younger years. I did not realize that Jeff is a technical whiz; I always assumed he was an expert on retail or book selling!

Visiting Disney World with a Project Manager: Part 3

My family and I have recently returned from our first trip to Disney World and I wanted to share our fun and some Best Practice for planning a trip to Disney World. This is the third of three entries which will provide a hopefully fun overview of our trip and how I applied simple Project Management techniques to ensure a successful vacation.

Execution – Manage the plan (Enjoy the trip, but keep refining the plan!)
After 11 months of planning the big day was finally upon us. We woke at 3:45 am to make our 6:30 am flight and arrived in Orlando on schedule. Since we had used the on-line service to pre-check in to the resort and indicated our planned arrival time, our room was ready and shortly our bags were brought directly to our rooms. Disney has customer service down to a science!

After a quick lunch it was time to hit Epcot and Soarin’. But my daughter had been hesitant all day and finally decided that we should visit the Honey I Shrunk the Kids attraction first. “No problem, honey” I said as my mind raced again! Let’s see... Honey I Shrunk the Kids is at Hollywood Studios not Epcot. Okay another change but again we adjusted accordingly.

As we entered Hollywood Studios we came across another opportunity. A family was leaving the park for the day and offered us their Fast Pass tickets to Toy Story Mania – which happened to be on our list of attractions to visit! If you are in the situation of leaving a park before you can use your Fast Pass please consider passing them along to someone else, it really adds to their day!

So we finish visiting Honey I Shrunk the Kids just in time for the afternoon parade and we start exploring the park. We quickly found Handy Manny and Jake signing autographs and taking pictures. One problem, we had not yet purchased autograph books. My wife saved the day by quickly finding a nearby store and purchasing two autograph books. Lesson learned – make sure to have your autograph books as soon as you enter your first park.

During the Planning Phase Michelle, my wife, cautioned me that we were picking out more attractions they we would likely be able to visit. Wow, was she right! Although I did consider ride wait times, knew we wanted to stop and see characters at greeting spots, and attend parades and fireworks, I did not account for all these tasks in my schedule planning. For example I did not plan on the 90-minute wait time to meet Rapunzel, which we could not leave without doing.

One basic lesson that I have learned and preach in Project Management is that it is not the tasks that you estimate inaccurately that haunt you; it is the tasks that you don’t identify and estimate that will haunt you. For example if you planned a series of tasks for say 55 hours and they each take 60 hours it will not impact the project as much as the few dozen 10 hour tasks that you never identified and estimated.

The impact of our vacation was that we did not get to visit all of our must see activities. In the end of course this was not a problem since we put these missed items on our list for our next trip to Disney!

As this impact was evolving and since I wake up at 5:00 am everyday even on vacation I would take that time to re-plan the day’s parks and activities. In the PM world this is where you manage the triple project constraints – scope, schedule and budget.

In the middle of this project I determined that the effort to complete our scope was greater than planned. Since we could obviously not increase the schedule because the reservations were set and we could not extend our stay, we had to adjust scope. The solution was to further refine the list of must see attractions and focus on these. So each morning I would review options for parks and activities, including the pros and cons of each with the family (project team) so we could jointly determine our path for the day. For example on the last day we could do Soarin’ at Epcot but the extended ride wait time and travel time between parks would mean we would lose the chance for several rides at the Magic Kingdom. In the end we opted to spend the last day at the Magic Kingdom and never did make it to Soarin’, which is the first thing we will do on the next visit!

Important Best Practice – Review potential changes with the team and decide collectively. Project Managers should always look to consult and secure buy-in from all stakeholder groups before making changes to the project – simple change request processing. Aren’t project management techniques so useful in everyday life?

If you plan to visit Disney World during the holiday season you must see the Osborne Family Lights at Hollywood Studio – simply breath taking!

In short the trip went very well and everyone agreed it was our best vacation to date. All it took was a lot of planning and maintaining flexibility during project execution. This is a simple concept that can be applied to any project!

Closeout – Assess project performance (Document your trip!)
Home again! After an uneventful fight we arrive home in chilly Albany with memories to last a lifetime. But wait, the project (vacation) is not done yet! You need to first document your trip by making sure to download and capture all of your pictures. If you chose to purchase any Disney Photo Pass pictures you only have a limited amount of time.

I downloaded all the pictures from our cameras and immediately made back-up copies. This is a lesson learned from the horrific flooding that was experienced locally from Hurricane Irene. During the flooding we lost our computer but fortunately we were able to have all of the pictures recovered. Of course this was a very minor inconvenience compared to the devastation that impacted and continues to impact many local residences.

You also want to capture any lessons learned and best practices for your next trip, several of which I have shared here. For example we decided that next time we would stay at a deluxe resort for the entire trip – the fridge and DVD player are great benefits, along with the character visits to the hotel along and many other extras! I highly recommend the Animal Kingdom Lodge, especially if there are animal lovers in your family.

Finally, please consider writing and posting trip report to share your experiences and help others, such as on Mouse Planet.

I hope this have given you some insights on just a few of the ways we can apply simple PM technical to everyday activities such as vacation planning. Please feel free to share any comments.

Visiting Disney World with a Project Manager: Part 1
Visiting Disney World with a Project Manager: Part 2

Here are a couple great Disney World reference books which I recommend.

Visiting Disney World with a Project Manager: Part 2

My family and I have recently returned from our first trip to Disney World and I wanted to share our fun and some Best Practice for planning a trip to Disney World. This is the second of three entries which will provide a hopefully fun overview of our trip and how I applied simple Project Management techniques to ensure a successful vacation.

Initiation – Define overall parameters (Define what, when and how!)
This is the phase where you nail down the logistics of your stay and book your reservations.

Over the past ten years Deborah Snyder, a fellow ‘Paranoid Professional’, and I have taught Risk Management for the Upstate New York Chapter of the Project Management Institute (PMI). PMI considers a risk to be any event that can result in either a negative (risk) or position (opportunity) consequence. Many times students struggle with the concept of a positive risk and it is not always easy to cite examples of these opportunities. During this project I came across a great opportunity!

Before booking your reservations I advise that you visit various sites related to Disney World and sign up for mailing lists. As a result of being on a Disney mailing list I was alerted to Disney’s limited time offer for a 40% discount on room rates. Since the project budget had already been allocated, instead of saving the extra money we decided to upgrade our accommodations. Instead of staying all 4 nights at the All Star Movie value resorts we switched to 2 nights at the All Star Movie value resort and 2 nights at the Deluxe Animal Kingdom Lodge. Since these are both Disney resorts, the good people at Disney are more than happy to move your bags between resorts, they will pick them up from one room and deliver then directly to your new room. This was a great example of a project opportunity which increased the Quality of our vacation without adding any additional costs!

During Initiation, you will also book your travel plans, as we did for our airline tickets when they became available around 6 months prior to our trip.

Finally, you need to book any Disney World extras in advance. Reservations for the character dining experiences open in advance 6 months to the day. Tip – book them six months to the day in advance. We planned to dine at Cinderella’s Royal Table on our first night, so five months and 28 days before our arrival I called to make our 3 character dining experience reservations. Oh sorry I was told, Cinderella’s Royal Table was already sold out for the night we wanted! I quickly shuffled our dining plans around with the very patient Disney person and ended up reserving dinner at Cinderella’s Royal Table for our last night, which ended up being a perfect way to spend our last evening at Disney World.

Now that your reservations have been made and your overall project parameters are set you can dig into detailed planning!

Planning – Further define and refine project plans (Get into the activities!)
For the Planning phase of our Disney World vacation I focused on identifying the sights and activities that we wanted to experience on our trip. The last thing you want to do is arrive at Disney World and not know that to do first, or second, or after that. While sequencing and estimating activities is critical on every project, when planning your vacation activities you don’t want to get too detailed. Hey Project Managers, loosen up –you don’t need to plan the vacation hour by hour. Instead we took the approach of listing the activities that were of most interest and wanted to experience.

Again planning well in advance is the key. The Disney site along with various other sites will provide details on all the Disney World attractions and rides. I also purchase the Birnbaum's Walt Disney World 2012 for my daughter. We sent many hours together pouring over this guide to develop a list of attractions we had to see.


You also need to know the schedule for various park activities (parades and fireworks) on the days you will be visiting, along with the opening and closing times for each park. I had all this information captured in a spreadsheet but we also accessed this information using the free version of the Undercover Tourist Disney Application on my wife’s I-Phone.

So we now knew everything we wanted to see along with and the timing of the various attractions in each park. You also want to know what you are doing first so you don’t check into the resort and are then not sure which park bus to get on! So we let our daughter pick the first attraction and she selected the carousel at the Magic Kingdom to ride first. I used this information and the already booked dining reservations to map out a rough plan as to which parks to visit on which days. Great, our plan was done!

But wait! As every Project Manger knows we need to be prepared for changes sometimes before we even get to the Execution Phase. In this case, 2 days before we leave for Disney World my daughter changes her mind and decides she wants to ride Soarin’ first. “No problem, honey” I said as my mind raced. Let’s see Soarin’ is at Epcot not Magic Kingdom and is very popular so you need a Fast Pass if you want to avoid the hour plus wait. A short time later I had re-planned the park visits based on this change. Good, we are ready to execute our project!

Visiting Disney World with a Project Manager: Part 1
Visiting Disney World with a Project Manager: Part 3

Here are a couple great Disney World reference books which I recommend.

Visiting Disney World with a Project Manager: Part 1

My family and I have recently returned from our first trip to Disney World and I wanted to share our fun and some Best Practice for planning a trip to Disney World. This is the first of three entries which will provide a hopefully fun overview of our trip and how I applied simple Project Management techniques to ensure a successful vacation.

Tip # 1 - treat your trip to Disney World like a project! A Project Management colleague of mine, Steve Russo, wrote So ... You're Going to Disney World: How I learned to stop worrying and embrace the planning process, a great book about the Disney vacation planning process which I highly recommend.

Also I would like to acknowledge Jonathan Blake who used the Disney World vacation as a case study for a New York State Project Management Guidebook training session at the 2005 GTC-East, some of the concepts I borrowed for this article.

So here is the first entry of how I managed our Disney World trip using the standard Project Management Origination Phase.

Origination – Select your destination (Define where)
This is the project phase where you make your case and obtain everyone’s approval to select Disney World as the vacation destination. This sounds easy since I don’t know many 2 or 5 year olds who would not want to go to Disney World!

Seriously, there is a process to selecting your destination, given many other available vacation options, and deciding on initial project parameters. To facilitate decision making you want to develop a high-level budget and schedule. In our case we knew we wanted to visit Disney World but first we had to make sure it would fit within our vacation budget and during a time when it was not so hot we would end up as puddles on the sidewalk!

An initial decision is what time of the year to visit. Of course Disney World is open each and every day, but at this point you want to narrow down the preferred season and month for your visit. Steve’s book contains a very insightful chapter to help you pick the best time for your visit. We chose late December since the weather would be cooler and the crowds relatively smaller.

In determining the budget you need to consider at least four major components: travel, park costs, accommodations, and daily spending/extras.

First you need to estimate the length of your stay for planning purposes. We chose to stay for 5 days and 4 nights but you can select different durations and crunch the numbers for each different scenario.

Travel – In this case we had to determine if we wanted to fly or drive to Disney World. My preference was to drive, how else would the kids get to see Pedro’s South of the Border along the way? My wife had visions of National Lampoon’s Vacation and quickly convinced me that we had to fly. Once we made this decision it was quite easy to check some on-line sites to estimate roundtrip airline costs.

Park Costs – Again it is easy to identify the costs of passes from online sites such as Disney or Undercover Tourist. There are many options to choose from and we took the Park Hopper option so we could visit multiple parks each day, which we did.

Accommodations – Next you need to estimate your costs for accommodations. The first decision is if you want to stay inside or outside of the Disney World Report. We decided to stay in the Disney Resorts and of course there are many to choose from. We picked Disney’s All Star Movie value resort to help contain the overall project, I mean vacation, costs. Visit the Disney Accommodations site for all the options, keep in mind they offer different prices for the various seasons!


Daily Spending and Extras – At this point you need to estimate how much you will spend daily on food and souvenirs. At Disney World there are many options for eating and you can estimate process with a little research. The Undercover Tourist Disney Smart Phone web application shows menus and prices for all Disney World parks and some of the resort restaurants. This is a neat, free application and highly recommended if you have a smart phone.

There are endless extras that you can include to further enhance your Disney experience. In our case we selected three character dining experiences, a favorite in our family.

Estimate each of these components and make sure it fits within your budget. Is a visit to Disney World still looking acceptable? If so proceed directly to Initiation!

Visiting Disney World with a Project Manager: Part 2
Visiting Disney World with a Project Manager: Part 3