PMO Leadership: Night Out On The Town Awards

Does your PMO have an award program for its project managers? Has your PMO considered, "Night Out On The Town Awards?"

Well, not too long ago, I had the pleasure of visiting with a good friend who is the PMO manager for a mid-sized corporation. We actually worked together over 20 years ago and have kept in touch over the years. One of the challenges that my good friend told me that he faced when he was hired to create the office of the PMO was that he joined a company that did not have a culture of recognizing and rewarding stand-out performance. The company did offer very competitive salaries, but beyond that there was little incentive compensation and even less management reserve for bonuses and awards. Whether this was the cause or a symptom of a something else, the end result was that the PMO team lacked an esprit décor and while the overall morale wasn’t bad, it wasn’t that good either. The staff no doubt got along, but did not have that synergistic camaraderie, teamwork, and sense of belonging that so often is the trademark of high-performance teams.

As a manager, it can be sometimes difficult to force people to behave in ways they don’t want to or are not accustomed to, but when the right environment is created sometimes this behavior starts to happen on its own. And that is what my good friend, the PMO manager, set out to do. He presented to his boss, the CIO, an idea and budget request for $1,000 to implement the idea. His idea was to once a quarter, during the quarterly PMO meeting - this is a longer and more comprehensive department meeting than the weekly PMO meetings - he wanted to give out a “Night Out On The Town Award” of $250 for one of the project managers to enjoy along with his or her significant other. The criteria for the award was PMO Manager discretionary which meant the PMO Manager could use it for any number of contributions made by the team. The key point was that the PMO Manager wanted to provide a little bit of Manager-level recognition that would serve both to recognize contribution as well as to provide the opportunity to let the "significant other" of the project manager to participate and be appreciated. After all, often times, extraordinary effort at work does come at the expense of one’s personal life in one way or another.

After the first year, four awards had been given out, and though they were a very small item in the scheme of all that was done in that first year, the recipients and the team at large really enjoyed the program and looked forward, in a very friendly collegial way, to the quarterly PMO meeting and finding out who the next winner of the award would be. And, after, everyone was anxious to find out how and where the “Night Out On The Town Award” was used. Was it fine dining, a dinner play, a sporting event, etc.

Now, not every organization is right for this kind of award. It is not a lot of money and in some organizations where other recognition programs are in place, such an award may not be necessary. But if your PMO lacks a certain level of morale, team well being, and behavior; take a moment to think about things that you can do to influence the environment and facilitate the results you want. Of all that we do as managers, sometimes it is the little things that have the big effects.