Introducing the Project President

Abid Mustafa is a seasoned professional with 18 years' experience in the IT and telecommunications industry, specializing in enhancing corporate performance through the establishment and operation of executive PMOs and delivering tangible benefits through the management of complex transformation programs and projects.

  Leadership   ProjectsAtWork  

When it comes to program-level decisions, consensus-by-committee can be slow and produce ineffective outcomes. To improve and accelerate the process, organizations should consider restructuring their project steering committees. By appointing the right person to play the role of the Project President, delivery of projects and programs can be vastly improved.

At crucial moments, well-timed executive decisions to steer projects and programs are often in short supply. Subsequently, issues are left unresolved, key milestones are missed and overall project delivery is delayed. While it may appear that executive indecision is the main culprit behind the delay, it not always the primary cause.

A common root cause lies in how executive leadership is exercised in project steering committees.  Normally, such committees are organized to encourage executives to provide guidance to project teams and participate in the resolution of issues among other responsibilities. However, this is usually done in a pluralistic manner as leadership is collectively shared among the executives. Figure 1.0 shows a typical project hierarchy that consists of a project steering committee that has four C- level executives.

Figure 1.0 - A typical Project Steering committee that exercises pluralistic leadership

In practice, this works fine for issues that are clear-cut to solve, as …

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