Over the summer I got the opportunity to go to Fenway Park with my son and Dad to watch the Red Sox play the Tigers. Surprisingly, they won. Seeing how far the Red Sox have fallen got me thinking about agreements and process which are two key elements from Stephen Covey's fourth habit, "Think Win/Win". I suspect that the Boston Red Sox have moved away from the type of agreements and process that got them to the World Series a few years back and now they are suffering the consequences of short term thinking. This article will review the steps necessary to build in the infrastructure necessary to assure your organization follows the Win/Win paradigm consistently when dealing with technology adoption.

In my previous article several weeks ago (sorry about that) we covered the interpersonal aspects of Win/Win fairly thoroughly. The idea is that if you are dealing with people of high character and establish strong relationships you have the foundation necessary for Win/Win agreements. Getting back to the premise of this article when the Boston Red Sox finally broke the 86 year "Curse of the Bambino" they had assembled a group of player who individually might not have been the best at their positions but collectively as a unit they were the most effective team in the league. There is a great article by Joe McDonald from ESPN Boston titled "Red Sox recall better times" contrasting the 2004 team with Boston's most recent teams. He focuses on the relationship the players on the 2004 team had with each other and their manager. One of the players on that team, Kevin Millar explained manager Terry Francona's style and why it worked so well, "He allowed you to be who you are. . . Let that person be who they are and that's when good things happen, and I think Terry did a good job of allowing that." The article goes on to talk about the cohesiveness and the camaraderie that the players shared. All of this contributed to an environment of Win/Win between the players and the manager. So what changed? They did manage to win it all again in 2007 but that team is widely recognized more as a collection of high priced free agents modeled after the Yankees and less about a true team. By 2011 the egos and self-centered mentality in the clubhouse had started to impact the quality of play until it degenerated into the spectacular collapse that had the Red Sox missing the playoffs and resulted in the firing of Francona. It seemed like he was doing the right things back in 2004 why weren't they right in 2011? The issue is that while in 2004 the relationships happened by luck not design and there were no agreements or processes in place to sustain the approach. As Covey states in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People "Win/Win can only survive in an organization when the systems support it." Boston had moved toward the quick fix by bringing in individuals who were more concerned about their statistics and paychecks than winning the game.

So how do we avoid the trap of competiveness and self-interest? You can't force people to think Win/Win. Covey sites a book by two Harvard Law Professors, Roger Fisher and William Ury titled Getting to Yes. In the book they discuss the idea of the principled negotiation and how to accomplish it by focusing on the interests and not the position. They recommend creating options for mutual gain with objective criteria that all parties can accept. Covey breaks it down into a four step process

• See the problem from the other person's point of view. Try to understand and express the needs of the other party as well or better than they can themselves.
• Identify the key issues and concerns (not positions) in play.
• Determine the acceptable outcome for both parties.
• Consider new options to achieve these results.

By utilizing this approach consistently you can ensure when you interact with both external partners and internal resources that the methodology or solution will be mutually acceptable and more likely to succeed. The key for successful PLM deployment or process improvement is to gain full buy in from all participants and the only way to accomplish this is to design an approach that all parties feel vested in. Otherwise as we discussed in the previous article they can undermine the project through malicious obedience or overt opposition.

The other factor Covey talks about in this chapter is performance agreements. This is more about the individual players in a project but can also be used when negotiating with external partners as well. Covey falls back to the criteria discussed in my 3rd article about delegation but he uses it in a different context. Performance agreements should consist of 5 elements; desired results, guidelines, resources, accountability, and consequences. We see all the time with sports teams that the performance agreements that are typically put in place are more about the individual's performance as opposed to the results of the team. On some level this makes sense since one person can perform extremely well and the team can still lose. It might be interesting to see what would happen if there were more incentives around winning. This might have helped Boston avoid the situation they are in now. In the context of a PLM deployment sitting down with the partner and defining the criteria for success up front and structuring the project around these outcomes is an effective way to ensure both parties are committed to success. This can be accomplished by the types of milestones defined throughout the project since compensation is typically tied to milestones. By spending time up front thinking about how things should work you are more likely to achieve the end you desire. We have seen a few companies that spend significant time up front analyzing their status quo process and what kind of impact they want from adopting PLM. When you take the time to do this it can dramatically improve the value of your PLM investment.

PLM and baseball have a lot in common. To have long term success you must plan for it. You might get lucky and assemble a team of people who can work together and be successful but this is rare and temporary. If you deliberately structure your agreements and processes to yield a Win/Win structure you will ensure predictably positive results consistently. In order for Boston to get back to their winning ways they will need to learn from their past success and develop methods to create that situation again. They might not be able to get back to the World Series but at least they might be able to win on a more consistent basis and play a better brand of baseball than they have this year. Learn from them and do not succumb to the "Curse of the Bambino".