In the valley especially, the visionaries are always looking at the positive outcome of decisions. People like positivity. I have seen in my career as an engineering manager, top level schedules promising miracles. “We will have the new ASIC brought up and the new hardware ready to ship out in 8 weeks”. Executives are very happy, financiers are counting the new revenue, marketing is scrambling for press releases and sales is gearing up. The program managers are looking at the schedule and checking the org charts for a new H. Potter who just started working in SQA. 

This overly “glass is half full” attitude is viewed as optimal for the Silicon Valley employee. Some executives seem caught up in the rapture of books describing how a no name guy created the next big thing because of his “can do” attitude alone. The attitude is unofficially mandated down the ranks. The overtly positive people rise up the ranks quickly. This creates the environment of  never focusing on the negatives and only on the positives. 

Program Managers are often viewed as pessimists. You need to look at the positive aspects I hear all the time and discount the naysayers. We need positive people to take this company to the next vaguely defined level. Blah Blah Blah…

Program Managers are all about looking at the problem as a whole. Weighting the positive aspects of the venture as well as the negative ones. We do not look at the glass as full empty or half empty. We love absolutely love the full part but we question the half empty portion. Why is the glass half empty? Did we run out of milk? Should we have been paying closer attention to the milk level in the carton so that we could have purchased a new carton prior to us only having enough for a half glass? What triggers should be put in place to indicate that a new carton of milk is needed. Do we need to chart and track the milk consumption to better predict when we will need more? We want to look at the whole picture. This approach will provide better understanding of how to avoid this the next time around, maximizing profit while minimizing risk. 

My favorite example of this is as follows. 

Have I got deal for you. I am giving you a zero dollar lease on a brand new Ferrari 458. An auto which retails for ~$275,000. In order to get this deal, you must drive this car every day as your commuter car and you must drive it for a period of five years and return it to me with only normal wear and tear.

Most of the “glass is only half full” crowd would jump at this chance. They would highlight all the wonderful aspects of this amazing deal. The raw power waiting for you to just depress the accelerator. The admiration of your friends. The wind in your hair as you take the car through its paces heading up highway 1 along the coast. The looks you would get from perfect strangers. All this would play well to massaging your ego. Don’t get me wrong, this also brings a smile to the program manager’s face but only for a minute.  

The program manager thinks what is the down side of this potential “too good to be true” offer? What possible negative aspects could it hold? What is the whole picture when you are looking at this “deal”? If I was evaluating whether to take this on or now I would start wholly focused on the “half empty” aspects as the “half full” are easily understood. 

I put on an average of about 15,000 commute miles. So that is 75,000 miles over the course of five years. Given that this car gets on average 14 miles to the gallon that comes to $3750 per year or $18750 over five years. Insurance runs about $10K/year, so that is another $50k. Now let’s look at maintenance. Oil changes cost $200 every five thousand miles, a minor service costs $4k (15K, 45K, 75K) so that is another $12k. Major Service (30k, 60k costs around $10k) Tires (~$1800 every 20K miles). All that comes to another ~$6k. 

After all is said and done, the program manager presents the whole picture.

In the end, the program manager may choose to go either way. The difference is, all aspects both positive and negative have been assessed. The program manager is neither an optimist nor a pessimist. The program manager is going in eyes wide open and is better able to assess the situation.

Even in non-car buying situations, this skill set is typically undervalued by corporations. A suicide net on the Golden Gate Bridge will not stop people from committing suicide but will prevent my view from being marred from someone jumping from the bridge while I am looking at it. Surely if the goal was to save lives, a $76 million dollar (that was the cost of the barrier) annuity to the San Francisco Suicide Prevention center whose budget is a mere $1M/year would actually save people as opposed to just having them kill themselves away from the Golden Gate Bridge. 

Sound decisions made when looking at all aspects of the decision. Focus too much on the positives and you may miss a critical “unintended” negative aspect which could undo all of the positives you hopes to achieve.