Does Google’s very economic model cause it to violate its principle to “do no evil?”

In all fairness, the same question could be asked of all automated ad distribution networks, not just Google’s Adwords program.

Looking at how the ad networks work, it seems that the more content there is on a subject (that is, the more popular or broad a keyword is), the more competition there will be for producers of that content to get noticed.

Therefore, producers will bid-up the price of an ad on that keyword. Is this the most efficient way for searchers to find relevant results?

One thing, this potential inefficiency in search relevancy has created an entire industry of search engine optimization specialists. These are people paid to understand the functioning of search algorithms for clients. It has also created an industry of link farms and black-box tactitians who exploit the gaps in the search algorithms.

(Note, this does depend on the assumption that many of the content producers are also vendors or sellers of goods or services within that broad category.)

One would think that the more content there is, the more need there is for the search engine itself to do a better job at sorting the data.

But, if the end result of this inefficiency is more revenue per click for Google, Yahoo, MSN or the owners of other ad distribution networks, do they have any incentive to improve the quality of their search, to do a better job?

Or, are they incentived to hold-back innovation and profit off the status quo?

p.s. For those with a long memory, this reminds of an observation by Jeremy Allaire, founder of ColdFusion, years ago, on why the browser stopped going forward once Internet Explorer became dominant.

Bainbridge OMPG carries on an interesting exploration on the value of automated ad distribution networks to distribute ads across offline media.  That is, does it make sense for advertisers to hire companies like Google, Yahoo or MSN to do their non-online media buying?

(Which brings up another question on how much media convergence is really valuable for brand advertisers -but that’ll have to wait for a different day).

The Bainbridge post talks in terms of relevancy and targeting.

Another angle to bring into the discussion is the supply of online content and the ease with which it can be created. While television channels have proliferated in the last two decades, and video content is ever finding new places to be viewed, it pales in comparison to the amount of content available on the web.

It is really cheap and easy to create a web page (which is not the case with a TV show).And it doesn’t require a license from the FCC to broadcast it.

The overwhelming ease of supply has the potential to destroy the integrity of the search results and therefore erode the value of ad distribution bots. Since the barriers to entry are higher for creating and broadcasting or disseminating?offline content, advertisers and media buyers should continue to get a bigger bang for their buck with offline content. -At least until the search engine networks figure out some way to further fine tune their alogrithms.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. Take the keyword “deodorant.” There are nearly 9 million pages Google found that it thinks are relevant to the term deodorant.

There is a neat metric called the KEI (keyword effectiveness index) which compares the supply of webpages which are relevant to a term versus the demand for that term. It is a scale of 0 - 400, with 400 being the most effective keywords. The KEI for deodorant on Google is 0.00. That means that the supply of websites, the supply of content, outstrips demand by a near infinite amount.

An automated ad distribution bot doesn’t know which of those are most revelant to an advertiser. It will broadly distribute those ads. This is fine if the marginal cost of each ad is near zero.

The problem is that with such a large amount of competition, owners of those content sites will likely start to bid up the cost of that keyword to make sure their content or product gets seen. (Which, of course, doesn’t give the ad network much incentive to change since its collecting the money.)

A second problem with the ease of content creation and the volume of content is that it increases the opportunities for click-fraud, link farms, and other practices which further degrade the value of the ad network.

A third problem is that the content doesn’t cost the ad network anything. They are capitalizing on other people’s work and do not have an ownership or any accountability to the content owners. Therefore, they have very little incentive to protect the integrity of a particular ad.

Google, for example, does not have any practice in place to stop a rival advertiser for flat out stealing another advertisers ad.

A television network is dependent on advertisers for revenue. The network and media buyers protect the integrity of the ads and, to some degree, the content of the ad outlet (the content and programming).

In the world of Google and other automated ad distribution networks, it is the content providers and advertisers who are dependent on them. Its not a winning dynamic for a big brand advertiser.

For comic book fans, X-men fans and all around superhero fans in the project management community a hero has been born: Hiro Nakamura, the 24 year old sales salary-man for Yamagoto Industries in Tokyo, Japan.

Hiro is one of the main characters on NBC’s new show, Heroes. He would be a fantastic project manager.

His communication, risk management or people skills haven’t yet been revealed. But in terms of raw assets, this guy would be value-add to any process or project -from six sigma, to ISO to best practices, Agile, whatever. His super powers transcend project management methodology. They are project management black-belt in the rough.

Hiro can move time with his mind. He is the ultimate master of project deadlines and timesheet costs. If a deliverable is coming in late or overbudget on labor costs -bam, now its not.

What’s more, since time and space are a single continuum, he figured out that if he holds the time variable constant, he can actually move himself instantly through space. He can teleport. Now, he’s only teleported himself, so far (from a subway in Tokyo to the middle of Time’s Square NYC -pretty impressive). It can’t be far off that he can teleport other objects. Or, other people.

More than cutting-down shipping costs, I bet there are some project managers who would really value this particular skill for other purposes. Someone getting on your nerves, management doesn’t get it -bam, their gone. And only you know where they went.

Precise and condensed communication is the secret to great project planning.

A project plan starts out inside someone’s head. It is an idea of how to get things done. It then moves from there to a mock schedule, a more fully fleshed out task list of steps that need to be taken. This task list is written out on the planner’s desk or their computer. In larger organizations it may take place within a project management office or project planning department.

The plan may include a whole range of variables like resources attached to tasks, risk margins, acceptable schedule variances.

But these are details.

The important aspect to understand about this part of the planning process is that it is confined within the person who conceived the plan, or the specialized project planning office. There is no communication. Its all in one person’s head or within a department of people who speak the same language.

The next step in planning is the most crucial. This is where planning makes a case for itself as either an integral, value-add to the company or just another wasted expenditure on the latest corporate fad.

From here, the plan has to leave the specialist’s world and be communicated to someone else. It has to be told to a team of people who are going to do the work on the project. Or it may have to be explained to management for their input. Either way, the project planner (either an individual or a planning or project management office) has to make somebody else understand the plan.

This is where it gets tricky.

The original planner understands the intricacies of the project and wants to convey every nuance they’ve put into the plan. Unfortunately, this is often way too much information and rarely helps the receiver of the communication understand the plan.

Or, the project planner may present the plan straight off their desk or computer, in whatever format or program they used to plan the project, and expect the other person or the team to get it off the bat, to speak the same language they do. They expect the other people to understand the same set of symbols, triangles, arrows and circles which the trained project planning expert may use.

This doesn’t work either.

The team the planner is talking to has their own language, their own skills and its foolish to demand they speak the project planner’s language. Its not their job. It’s the project planner’s job.

Its up to the project planner to condense their ideas. Gear your communications so that people can first understand the fundamentals of the plan. People can build off that foundation later once the big blocks are understood.

It is up to the project planner (or project planning or management office) to be well versed in the language of the people they’ll be talking to so that the plan has context and can start to make sense to them. After all, unless the planner is also the company management and the project resource and the customer paying for the results, it doesn’t really matter how well they understand the plan. It only matters that they help other people do their jobs so that everyone can move the company forward.

It takes precise and condensed communication.

Focus on the big blocks of the plan. Don’t get carried away with the details or the higher level tools of the project planning trade. Know your audience and speak to their needs.

Once a plan is communicated properly, and the people get it, you’d be amazed at the kind of creative brainstorming that can result. When people with other skills, the people who are going to do the work on the project understand the plan, mistakes and errors can be planned out. Obvious roadblocks can be avoided and the effectiveness of the deliverables increased markedly.

In the executive suite, if the plan is understood, the project can be better directed toward corporate goals. Also, otherwise hidden implications of meeting those goals can be uncovered and re-evaluated in new light.

And it will all be attributable to great project planning well communicated plans.

Collaboration is a word that is thrown around a lot when it comes to web-based project management. Understanding the types of collaboration out there and knowing what you are looking for, can help you make a better selection when it comes to buying project management software.

Since projects are about people working together to get things done, its natural that web-based project management software facilitates people working together- collaborating. This is one of the most significant innovations of web-based project management software. It is also one of the most casually used buzzwords. Here is a quick guide to help de-code what people are talking about when they say collaboration in project management software.

There are two main categories of collaboration you’ll generally find in project management software:

1) Information Sharing

2) Working on Deliverables

Information Sharing
Information sharing is collaboration on the status of the project. Its information on the project itself. Project management software facilitates this by all the project information consolidated and collected in one central, online information portal. Then, having this portal be accessible by team members, managers or clients (as a client project portal), any time from any where.

Different project management software programs will vary on what information is collected. This can range for simple project information such as a task list and whether people are complete or not, to budget information, estimated costs and resource utilization on a project or task. More advanced project management tools such as budget variance, baselining or earned value may also be calculated and stored in a central project portal.

The project information can be collected and accessed in several different ways.

One place is the area where that part of the project is planned, managed or controlled. For example, you may be able to get schedule status or up-to-the minute task information by looking at the live project schedule. Or, if you want to get resource availability you would look at the project list, what?s on the plate of individual team members.

Some project management software tools give you the ability to see this information in pre-formatted project reports. These reports may be about single items like a single project or a single resource or a single period of time. Or, they may be cross-project or total company views. It depends on the capabilities of the project management software and what kind of project views you are looking for in a project management tool. Higher-end project management software will also allow you to run these same reports across projects and even graphically represent them.

In addition to pre-formatted project reports, some software tools may offer customizable project reports which let you pick what aspects of a project you’d like to see or monitor. For example, you may want to see a project report on the overall schedule and budget health of projects for a specific client which are managed by the Bozeman, Montana office during the last month. Most higher-end project management products will allow you to run these type of reports. Some will also give you the ability to save them as templates, share the reports with others, show the information in Gantt charts, project graphs or pie-charts and even export the data to MS Excel.

A fourth way of receiving this kind of project status information is via email. The status of deliverables, budgets or timeline can be sent out with auto email notification. These are items which you can define in most project management software tools that will trigger an email notification to go out to specific people when a specific event happens (for example when a deliverable is completed) or before or after something happens on the project (for example, prior to reaching a budget milestone or a task being late).

Working on Deliverables
The other aspect of collaboration is working on an actual deliverable or task. Some project management software packages allow for people to work together on documents through a document management system or digital asset management system.

Project management software tools may also allow people to work together on a specific project issue through an issue tracking system. These issues can be help desk type trouble tickets or general issues surround a project which are best resolved through threaded message-board type functionality. In the right environment, this kind of collaboration on project deliverables can increase the productivity and creativity of your process.

Collaborating in this way, using an online or web-based project management tool, has the added benefit of leaving tracks.

A good project management tool keeps a record of the revisions to documents so that a document history or revision history can be pulled up in the document management component of the project management software.

Likewise in an issue tracking system, the status of issues can be searched in the issue section of the project management software. The resolution, outcome and history of the discussion thread will be stored in a knowledge based of the project management software.

Working on deliverables, collaborating, online makes it easy for a company to build up an institutional memory. All the data, the process and the knowledge invovled with that work will be associated with a project or the knowledge base within the tool, making the project management software a well organized, easy to access, easy-to-use repository of company knowledge and past project activities.

Found an anecdote on Mark Cuban’s blog. Highlights the nature of the information on Wikipedia (and the process on its formation).

Along the same note, here’s a link to a now classic Stephen Colbert report on Wikipedia.

I’ve received a lot of feedback to my position on Wikipedia brought about by a recent Wall Street Journal article. The feedback has been productive. Its helped elucidate some of the key differences between Wikipedia and Britannica.

The foremost of these differences seems to be audience expectations.

There is one world, online, where people want to be part of the process of growing knowledge, of being heard and sharing. Knowledge in a particular area, for them, is something malleable and something they use to identify themselves with a community.

Then there is another world, offline, where people just want the facts, as they are. Doesn’t have to be latest greatest. Doesn’t have to be with a grain of salt. Something straightforward they can learn and then get on with their lives. Knowledge in that particular area, for them, is something they want to find out about, but not something they want to give too much commitment to.

This gets to the core of our definition of knowledge. When someone wants to “look something up” what are they hoping to find? What do that want to do with that information? How do that want to interact with that information?

Wikipedia presents a different way of interacting with knowledge.

Its seems to have unlocked a lot of pent-up demand for people to be heard. But I’m not sure its the most productive way for society as a whole. I’d worry if kids did science reports based on Wikipedia. Or if they protested the whole format of a report and pushed, instead, for an open dialogue with their class on the subject.

There is a place in this world for a fixed grounding -for clear definitions of what we know, delineated from speculation and opinion. Perhaps Wikipedia should have a disclaimer that the contents are a work in progress, take it with a grain of salt. Perhaps it would be more accurately filed in the category of an open, collaborative publishing site and not an online encyclopedia.

The Wall Street Journal has a tense interview between the founder of Wikipedia and the editor the Encyclopedia Britannica.  Raises tons of interesting questions.  The biggest one is whether the Wikipedia approach offers readers a source of knowledge? Or is it, in Stephen Colbert’s term, a source of truthiness? Feels true, we’d like it to be true. But it isn’t.

For those who don’t know how Wikipedia works, it goes like this.  Someone decides that there should be an entry on a particular topic, say project management software.  Or, they decide there should be an entry on a particular piece of software.  The author searches around and sees that other vendors of project management software have entries on their products, so why not this particular software.

They go ahead and write that entry and post it.  Suddenly, this particular software is part of the universal body of knowledge available to everyone.  (And it also benefits from having a great link-source for search engine rankings.)

The post may then be visited by other people interested in the subject or it could be totally ignored.  Or, it could be stumbled upon by someone who decides it doesn’t fit with “Wikipedia standards.” They may decide it is an advertisement and not worthy of being included in the Wikipedia body of knowledge.  This self-appointed editor then goes to work on the article.

Unbeknownst to the author or to the world at large, the self-appointed editor begins an opaque process to remove the article and any mention of it throughout Wikipedia.  Like in the Soviet Union, the article, the software and the company are quietly erased.  They no longer exist.

What remains in Wikipedia are articles which the self-appointed editor crowd decides are relevant. Articles and entities which fit into their world-view or their self-interest. At the end of the day, Wikipedia reflects the interests and views of a large, community clique.

In contrast, Britannica draws on 4,000 scholars - Noble Prize winning, expert in their field type people. Academia, while far from perfect (and in many ways, another, albeit larger clique), is, at least, a recognized tradition of knowledge seeking, debate and fact finding.  The goals of academia are to advance the cause and body of knowledge.

While it may be counter to truthiness, academia is where the human race has drawn its truths.  I’m not talking here about moral truths. I’m talking empirical, mechanical or historical truths.  The same can’t be said of the clique of people who somehow get into the editorial club at Wikipedia.

Further, the editors of Britannica (and other traditional encyclopedias) see themselves as keepers of the academic tradition and disseminators of knowledge.  Unlike Wikipedia, they are not out to “make a point.”

When Diderot and the other encyclopedist set out to organize and publish the entire body of human knowledge, the goal was the educate as many people as possible. To share the fruits of lifetimes of research with the “masses”, to make the repositories of knowledge more accessible.

Wikipedia’s goal seems to be to have as many people as possible decide what the body of human knowledge should be. Its spin and hype a public bulletin board, rather than knowledge.  Like another mass movement of Diderot’s days, the French revolution, this too will be disruptive and dangerous. And perhaps most upsetting, a distraction to education and knowledge.

DM News online recently published an article by the General Manager of Intuit’s Quickbase. The article is Five Steps to Simple Marketing Project Management.

There are two crucial requirements for project management software which she left out. (While aimed at marketing departments, these apply to IT departments and others, as well.)

1) Scalability. Marketers can deal with a large number of on-going projects involving multiple teams, clients or project portfolios. Make sure your project management software can scale, easily and out-of-the-box, to handle that level of complexity. Report should give you clarity into your projects, helping you get a handle on everything that’s going on. Functionality should be skillfully crafted so that the software remains easy to use no matter what level of complexity you are dealing with. If not, managing the software can become a job in itself -creating more work than its worth.

2) Training and Support. Implementing project management software takes a degree of formalizing workflow. For creatives and other professionals (like software developers) this may be a bit of a change. Your project management software vendor should have a committment to hands-on training and ongoing support to make this process as easy as possible.  They should help you map out the process (afterall, they should have experience doing this with other customers before). They should be easily accessible, to hold your hand, as it were, throughout the process. And remain friendly, accessible and supportive throughout the relationship.

She is right on when it comes to simplicity and trying out project management software. If you are looking for reasons to try online project management sfotware, see our earlier post.

All work and no play makes Brian a dull boy, so I need to let everyone know about this cool toy/tool to hit the market. The tool to look at is the I-Tech Virtual Laser Keyboard which can be found on my favorite toy site:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/input/8193/

This virtual keyboard uses a laser to paint a full size QWERTY keyboard on any surface. You can then use the virtual keyboard like any regular keyboard. No more pulling around a small foldable or tiny keyboard.

This is Star Wars level cool. Enjoy!

According to my industry insider, many companies in today�s project management space originally created a project tracking solution for themselves, based on their internal processes and for their business, and then decided on one fine day that their software could be used by others, and could possibly make them some money to boot. I call these types of software producers �it worked for me, so maybe it will work for them.�

This is perhaps the lowest level of software producer. They have no aspirations, no true philosophy of software design, and when it comes down to it, they are only in it for the cash. This is in contrast to real software artists that are inspired to create for sake of a great purpose, while the money aspect is secondary.

There are of course those that approach project management software for an academic level, designing a product to assist in complex and very large projects. The key here is realizing that most people and most groups find this type of software just too feature and function rich for the average person. The software is too deep and advanced for anyone who is not a PMI expert. If a�project management�software solution takes a minimum of two weeks to just to start to understand it�s basic functions, this is not going to be an effective solution for your average business person. The shameful fact is, a large number of products on the market are just these types of advanced solutions. So when you consider purchasing a product, make sure the feature set is not too deep for your application.

The next level of project management philosophy is what I have subscribed to whole heartedly for ten plus years. The key to successful�project management�software design is a strict adherence to the idea that most people doing project management are not project managers, and these people need the right tool. This tool should be easy to learn, and make sense for anyone doing a basic project work.

The most popular project management tools today, MS Word and Excel, are not really project management tools at all. Yet they are being used everyday for project management because most designers, programmers, marketers, financiers, do not know that there exists an easy-to-use�project management�tool designed specifically for non-project management�experts.� These properly designed PM tools have been known to bring about 35% + increases in efficiency overall, with sometimes 60% + time savings for non-project management�experts. In other words, once we stop using the wrong tools for project management; hardcore solutions, Word, and Excel, then the rewards can be immense.

Ultimately, when you start to look for a new project management solution for your business, examine the philosophies behind these products. Ask the sales people who their product is designed for, and what brought about their decision to build a�project management�tool in the first place. Finally, get a demo account for those software products that look like a good fit and put them through the paces. Second to why they built their product, is the idea of �How� the actually features work. Anyone can put together a feature list that looks good, but do the features work well, and do they work with in harmony with the various components of the tool.

Not all project management tool are the same. There are very large differences from company to company, but by using these guidelines it should make the search a little less confusing. Don�t be afraid to ask the real questions, and listen carefully to see that the answers make sense for you. Until next time.

Benjamin Franklin took on a lot of projects in his life.  Here are five key concepts for effective project management culled from his Autobiography.

1) Deliver: Ideas are great but delivery is what projects are all about.

2) Do People Favors: Favors have a psychological affect on people and can build powerful bonds that go beyond the politics of a project.

3) Ask for Favors: People overestimate the value of things they do for other people and therefore feel superior and kinder towards people they’ve helped.

4) Solve Easy Problems: Great results can happen in changing things that look small and easy.

5) Manage Bureaucracy: Understand and, if possible, change the rules of your environment.  They determine the realm of potential outcomes and even likely outcomes of your tasks and projects – even before you start planning.

Here are those project management concepts spelled out more.

1)  Deliver.  Ideas are great but delivery is what projects are all about. If you don’t execute, complete and deliver, the ideas and effort are misdirected.

There is some academic controversy around the accuracy of the Benjamin Franklin’s portrayal of himself in his autobiography and how “nice” he may have been in his means of accomplishing projects. But no-one can deny the impact he had. He delivered. Again and again.

2)  Do people favors.  It doesn’t have to be out of the goodness of your heart. Favors have a psychological affect on people and can build powerful bonds that go beyond the politics of a project or organization.

Doing other people favors has clear advantages.  Those advantages are magnified if you don’t hold the favor over the other person or overestimate what you did for them.  Remember, results are on the outside. What matters is how the other person perceives the favor.

3)  Ask for favors.  Once someone does you a favor, they will most likely over-estimate its value to you. This creates a dynamic where they see themselves as friendly to you. Depending on the nature of the favor and your reaction to their “kindness” they might even see themselves as your “protector.”

Ben Franklin recounts an incident where he wanted to develop a relationship with a politician on the other side of an issue. He learned that that person had a book in his library which Ben wanted to read.  Being a voracious reader and super-considerate book borrower since he was young, this was a perfect opportunity for Ben.  He sent a message to the gentleman asking if he could borrow the book. It had nothing to do with the issue they were debating. It was “outside of work” as it were, and personal.

The gentleman was touched that Ben Franklin overlooked any issue and asked him for a book.  He lent it to him. Ben read it and  returned it promptly with a note expressing his thoughts and gratitude for the favor.  This gave the guy warm fuzzies and kind feelings towards Ben Franklin. It was a beneficial relationship that lasted well beyond the issue of the moment or politics as a whole.

4)  Solve Easy Problems.  Hone in on the simple part of a problem and concentrate on changing it.  Great results can happen in changing small things. Avoid being distracted by larger “strategic” issues. All things being equal, the more problems you solve overall, whether in a project or the organization, the more your reputation and opportunities will grow.

These issues are often administrative, process type problems, or problems with the flow of information.  They are easily overlooked and decidedly not hip.  But an improvement in any of these areas impacts the whole team and can make a significant difference. These improvements can be either within the confines of delivery in a project. They impact items like workflow, budget, task management, execution or interpersonal relations.  Or these type of process improvements can be projects themselves for companies.

5)  Master Bureaucracy.  Ben Franklin was an innovative and effective administrator. He knew his way around process and bureaucracy. He used it to great advantage.  He saw how administrative rules actually molded the realm of potential outcomes of any project or issue.  He saw that changing the rules one way or the other would even make one potential outcome more likely then the other.

Understand the environment you are operating in. Understand how the rules and constraints on action are made.  Once you do, work towards changes that make positive, constructive outcomes more likely, things like on-time deliverables, being within budget and having inspired team members.

Why Project Management Software is Not a Commodity

The person on the other end of the phone line is a new buyer and he keeps saying to me that buying project management software is a confusing and difficult process because all these project management products look the same. I answer saying that I agree on the surface that it looks that way, and that it is frustrating because everything does seem to do the same thing. I continue to explain that I understand their pain and then my real job comes into play.

That is when I pause for a moment, take in a deep breath, take off my sales hat and with a flare toss on my teachers hat.  My teachers hat looks just like my sales hat, but I assure you, here too, there are significant differences in intent and approach even if they look similar.

I explain on the phone that choosing project management software is just like buying a car. Ok, maybe not exactly like buying a car. On the surface of things, a car typically has four wheels, an engine, and will usually get you from point A to point B. The big however, however, is that the style, manner, and method, of getting from point A to point B can be the difference between a Motel 6 situated upon a lonely highway to a Four Seasons in Midtown Manhattan. Perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that I can drive a go-cart or I can drive a BMW, and even though they share a lot of the same attributes there is a vast ocean of difference.

At this point in the conversation the customer’s interest in aroused. Listening is my sales mantra, and understanding the essence of why someone wants to buy – this is my key to finding excellent customers for my product. So with my listening skills I have the customer’s ear – I understand what difficult road they are coming from and how to get them on to the right road.

This is when I respond by saying that it all comes down to why someone, or some company decide to build their software system in the first place. After all, what is the essential reason for their act of programmable creation. This is the first step in clearing the obscurity of project management software multiplicity. Once we clear up the philosophy behind their software, we can start to understand how this product is not like the others and what makes it unique.

End of Part 1

Good communication is a key factor in successful project management, particularly when it comes to scheduling.

This applies to project managers, team members and business managers.

Sometimes people can be vague or non-committal when asked about their time or scheduling expectations. There are responses phrased to show flexibility or eagerness like “let me know what works for you.” There are polite, deferential answers like “don’t move things just for me.”

However they are phrased, these answers aren’t helpful. They usually result in someone’s time being squeezed and the schedule being in jeopardy. They also breed frustration and resentment.

For sure, people should take care in what they say, to make sure they aren’t hurtful or negative. But there’s an important difference between giving someone “space” in your communications and not giving accurate information at all.

• A project manager needs to know a person’s availability and time constraints.
• Team members need to know the time table to which the project manager would like them to adhere.
• Business managers need an accurate assessment of a project’s feasibility and status. Business leaders also be specific in their expectations of timing and resource use for a project.

People and projects are best off in an environment of honesty and transparency where reality is prized above delicate phrasing.