February/March 2007

Volume 47, Number 4

Technical Communicators Learn about Intelligent Disobedience at January Chapter Meeting

by Al Kemp

President Deb Lockwood welcomed attendees to the new year and the January chapter meeting. After announcements about job openings, a FrameMaker class at Metro in March, volunteer needs, upcoming newsletters, scholarship awards, nominations for chapter officers, and the senior member dinner, Lockwood introduced the speaker.

Bob McGannon is a PMI certified Project Management Professional, an IBM certified Executive Project Manager, and a certified coach for the Boeing Corporation. He has published many papers and business articles including topics such as recharacterizing problems to find new solutions, structuring teams for success, and managing change.

Bob McGannon, speaker at the January meeting

McGannon's entertaining and thought-provoking presentation, "Intelligent Disobedience:  The Difference Between Good and Great Leaders," explained why saying "yes" all the time is not a good idea.

The term intelligent disobedience comes from the world of seeing-eye dogs. Those dogs must disobey their owner's commands when following a command will place the dog's owner in danger.
The purpose of intelligent disobedience is to:

• Enhance personal success
• Expand the success of the businesses that employ us
• Ensure the ongoing success of our profession

McGannon pointed out that falling victim to learned helplessness is easy. People who use excuses like "They never let us do that" have made the decision to accept conditions as they exist.

When traditional means don't work, intelligent disobedience provides a way to achieve an outcome by nontraditional means.

McGannon stressed that he is not promoting unethical conduct such as holding back information, telling half-truths, or breaking corporate rules. On the contrary, intelligent disobedience should always be ethical. When unethical decisions are made, we have a moral duty to follow the principles of intelligent disobedience and present ethical alternatives to management.

Intelligent disobedience requires a project manager to:

• Take risks
• Employ creativity
• Be persistent (overcome learned helplessness!)

Regarding risk, McGannon recommended "Take pain now, later is deadly." The earlier we address problems, the more likely we are to solve them. As a project manager, if we don't have enough authority, we should ask for more at the start of the project. If we get the authority, great! If we don't, we have taken advantage of an opportunity to discuss with our management and project sponsors why we need the authority.

Bob McGannon with Martha Sippel and Tammy Van Boening

If using our style doesn’t get our point across to someone, we should take a risk and try using their style. For example, if we are logical and we are trying to persuade an emotional person, we should be more emotional.
McGannon warned that being careful of what we say so we can preserve a relationship is a fallacy. If we can't say what we need to say, we don't have a relationship. We should never be rude, but we should not need to be careful. To illustrate his point further, he recommended the book Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott.

Doing something different, something out of character, can get people to listen to you. McGannon told a story about a manager who creatively encouraged employees to test a product thoroughly by offering rewards for finding errors. At the end of the test period, the company shipped an extremely high-quality product.

During the presentation, McGannon asked the audience to write down creative ways to say "no." He read several of the most creative examples and gave away several large plastic noses to promote the big change in saying “No.”

He left us with some key ideas are:  persistence is important; don't assume that people know what you want, help them to understand your needs. McGannon suggested that if we are having trouble getting a manager to attend project meetings, we should not give up. We might, for example, ask the manager to sign a memo granting us authority to act in the manager's place. We may not get a signed memo, but the manager will show up at the project meetings!

In the words of Gandi: "A 'no' uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a 'yes' uttered merely to please.