Voices on Project Management

By Lynda Bourne

In the first part of this two-part series, I looked at the diverse nature of projects and project management across different organizations. In this post, I’ll explore the concept of professionalism and how it applies to the practice of project management.

The Concept of a Profession

The term “profession” has a number of distinct attributes that have changed over time.

The starting point for being a professional is the fact you are paid for your work. The next element of professional relates to skill and pride in the quality of the work being produced. The concept of a profession evolved from a need to regulate the delivery of skilled services to the community. 

With the arrival of the concept of educated people undertaking a skilled role such as accounting or engineering, the idea of a professional institution made up of its members emerged. 

These institutions were created by their members to act as regulatory bodies for the profession they represented. They established formal qualifications based upon education and examination, with powers to admit and discipline members.

Early modern tradition recognized four professions: divinity, medicine, law and engineering. This starting point expanded through the 19^th and 20^th centuries to encompass a range of other professions. The expansion continues to this day.

Characteristics of a Profession

Traditionally, a profession:

• Renders a specialized service based upon advanced and specialized knowledge and skill. The profession collectively possesses a body of knowledge and a repertoire of behaviors and skills.
• Is organized into one or more professional associations that control the actual work of the profession and the conditions that surround it (admissions, educational standards, examination and licensing, career paths, ethical and performance standards, professional discipline).
• Enjoys a common heritage of knowledge, skill and status to the cumulative store of which professional members are bound to contribute through their individual and collective efforts.
• Is bound by a distinctive ethical code in its relationships with clients, colleagues and the public.
• Is charged with a substantial degree of public obligation by virtue of its possession of specialized knowledge.

This framework was supported by governments, which used membership in professional institutions as a convenient way to regulate the provision of services to the general public.

For traditional professions this tidy arrangement between the individual, the professional institution and the government worked very effectively in many parts of the world through to the 1950s and 60s. 

However, in the last 50 years or so, the traditional framework has started to break down and new concepts are emerging. Governments are increasingly moving to directly regulate the provision of professional services to the public, with the professional associations focusing on education, skills development and the encouragement of “good practice.”  

There now seem to be three distinct types of professional associations:

• Those that qualify and licence members to practice the profession, sometimes with the support of government regulations.
• Those that qualify members, but where the government separately licences the member to practice.
• Those that qualify members, but there are no regulatory constraints on practice—membership is a competitive advantage.

Professional institutions such as PMI and IPMA fit into the third category. These associations are focused on developing the knowledge and capability of the profession, but anyone can practice.

This creates an interesting anomaly! Traditionally professions emerged from a group of professional practitioners creating an association to protect their specialist skills and knowledge and restrict entry to the profession.

In contrast, project management would appear to have evolved to the stage where associations are driving the development of the profession and are actively seeking members. However, the lack of regulation allows anyone to practice.

What’s a Pro Look Like?

So, back to the question posed at the start of these articles: Is project management a profession? If your benchmark is the practices of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, definitely not: professional associations do not control the right to practice as a project manager. 

However, in the paradigm of the 21^st century, we are well on the way to being a modern profession based on professional associations. And while the ability to practice project management is never likely to be regulated (we don’t threaten public safety in the way doctors and engineers can); the desire of employers to engage professional project managers (i.e., capable, qualified and ethical people) is apparent. 

The challenge for the associations over the next few years will be developing the elements beyond certifications needed to support professionals, and to create ways to make this distinction attractive to members and recognizable to employers. Simple certifications are unlikely to be enough, the associations and professional members will need to demonstrate a distinct “professional” way of working.

Given the massive differences in practice between an engineering project manager running a multi-million building site and an “agile” IT project manager developing a new app, defining the core elements of professional practice will not be easy. 

Some of the areas I believe will be important are:

• Stakeholder engagement and communication: projects are done by people for people. Effectively working with and influencing people is the key to success.
• Practical ethics: courageously and honestly providing the best information possible (based on reliable processes), and dealing with uncertainty (risk) and problems openly and effectively.
• Managing your project team: projects are temporary organizations with a unique set of challenges for the team leader.
• Focusing beyond narrow constraints of success (time, cost and scope): partnering with executive management and contributing to the creation of a successful project outcome. Professional project managers will be at the center of an organization’s ability to generate value from change.

These are my ideas—what do you think will shape our profession?     

By Lynda Bourne

PMI is at the forefront of the push to have project management recognized as a profession. But what does professional project management look like?

The first challenge in understanding the profession of project management and the difference between project and general management is recognizing that the group of people involved in the project from a temporary and dynamic organization.

The temporary organization being managed by the project manager may include full-time and part-time people in many different configurations.

The temporary organization for each project builds in the early stages, may change character completely in the middle (e.g., as the project transitions from “design” to “build”) and dissipates in the later stages. Each of these temporary organizations is unique and ever-changing.

What is a project?

The challenge of defining project management as a profession faces another issue: The decision that creates a project in one organization may create several in another. For example, to implement a process upgrade affecting manufacturing plants in several states, one organization may choose to set up a single large project. Another may opt for a series of smaller projects each focused on one state, and yet another may set up a program to manage the work and let the program run coordinated projects in each separate plant. All of these options will create projects, but they are very different entities to manage.

To further challenge the concept of a project, the same deliverable may be at the center of two quite different projects! When a project like building a new facility is being delivered by a contracting company to a client organization, it is common to see both a delivery project manager working to create the deliverable and a client-side project manager running a project to acquire the deliverable.

To be successful, the delivery project manager has to build the new facility so that it meets the specified contract scope and quality, and do so within the contracted price and timeframe.

The role of the client-side project manager is quite different and not so well-documented. Among many other things, client-side project managers should work to ensure the delivery organization and project are aligned to the needs of the client. They have the authority to represent the client organization, and maintain the link between the project and the strategy of the client organization.

These client-side functions are essential for overall project success but represent a very different type of project manager. 

The PM common core

Then there is the degree of authority granted to a project manager, which can vary enormously. Some project managers are responsible for budgets of millions and hiring the people they need; others have far less authority and autonomy. And finally, there are the various classifications of project: by size, industry, complexity and project management methodology being deployed (e.g., agile versus waterfall).

Despite the diversity outlined above, there are important commonalities. First, each of these endeavours is seen as a project by the project manager and stakeholders. And every project manager aims to deliver his or her project successfully.

So where does this leave the concept of a project management profession? We have established that the concept of project management covers a very diverse range of management positions and a range of equally diverse temporary organizations. However, many people actively choose to define themselves as project managers and treat the work they are managing as a project, and most people recognize a project manager when they meet one. For this to occur, there has to be a common core that defines the practice of managing projects, and this common core can be used to build a profession.

If we are going to be successful in creating the profession of project management and having it generally accepted as a profession, the elements of professional practice will need to be based on these core practices and defined in a way that covers a very broad discipline.

My next post will look at how to apply the concept of professionalism to a practice that is as diverse as project management.

By Lynda Bourne

In my last post, I delved into the SCARF model of cognition during a social situation. Created by Dr. David Rock, the model describes the five elements that can be a motivational reward or a threat to an individual: status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, fairness.

I tackled status and certainty in part 1 and now turn to the final three elements of SCARF.

Autonomy

Successful autonomy feels great! You have been given a challenge and succeeded. No one likes to be micromanaged. Even in jobs that require close coordination between a number of people (think of production lines), each person—and the group as a whole—needs to feel they have some control over their destiny if you want a motivated team.

The art of providing the right amount of autonomy to each team member is effective delegation. If the delegation is a stretch assignment for the person, make sure someone is available to provide coaching and support to make the learning experience enjoyable. Most people like to learn new skills but hate failing.

Relatedness

A feeling of relatedness is a primary reward for the brain, and an absence of relatedness is a primary threat. The feeling of relatedness is what you get when you belong to a group. Having many positive social connections (e.g., a sense of relatedness) doesn’t just increase your happiness, it can reduce your blood pressure and help you live longer.

The challenge for leaders is to create an inclusive group. Just as your brain automatically classifies situations into possible rewards or threats, it does the same with people, determining, subconsciously, whether each person is a friend or foe. People you don’t know tend to be classified as foe until proven otherwise—including the new team member. Careful planning is needed to build the team initially, and then to introduce new people into a team once it has formed.

How individuals relate is cultural. Some cultures and individuals are highly tactile and enjoy close physical contact—hugs and kisses on the cheek are part of the normal social processes (even in the workplace). Others expect and require more personal space. This is not a problem if everyone is from a similar background, but needs careful management if the team is made up of people from different cultures.

Fairness

Fairness can be more rewarding than money and is probably the only SCARF element that is almost impossible to overdo. The fact that being treated unfairly can generate a strong threat response is unlikely to be a surprise to anyone. What may be a surprise is that a sense of fairness can be significantly rewarding in and of itself.  

Fairness-generated emotions can run high even in mundane situations such as being short-changed at the checkout. The feeling of being taken advantage of can wreck an otherwise great day, despite the relatively insignificant money involved.

The tendency to prefer equity and resist unfair outcomes is deeply rooted in people, to the extent that they are willing to sacrifice personal gain in order to prevent another person from receiving an inequitably better outcome.

It’s especially easy for people or teams to get upset by small injustices when they are tired. Therefore, leaders must ensure fairness both in fact and in perception. They need to do their best to be always seen as doing the right thing by everyone. This is no easy task!

Summary

All the SCARF elements crop up routinely in various theories of motivation. Dr. Rock’s contribution is to tie these factors back to the most fundamental processes in the human psyche.

When a leader gets the mix right, people’s pleasure drives are engaged, serotonin and other hormones are released and they feel good. If the settings are wrong, the limbic system switches to a threat response, which triggers a fight-or-flight reaction.

Either reaction occurs deep in a person’s subconscious and happens far quicker than rational thought. Therefore, the leadership challenge is to create the right environment for the team. Leaders must encourage the positive reactions that appear to lead to the creation of genuine happiness—at least in so far as happiness is driven by the chemical reactions in our brains. 

By Lynda Bourne

In my last post, “Is a Happy Team a Motivated Team?,” I suggested a happy project team was likely to be an outcome of a motivated team, rather than something you achieve in isolation. So this post looks at some of the key elements a project manager can use to develop a motivated team. That, in turn, should lead to a happy group of people who enjoy their work. My next post will examine even more ways to achieve this.

In his book Your Brain at Work, Dr. David Rock defines the “SCARF” model of what happens in the brain during social situations. This model can provide useful insight into the way motivation works. While it may seem odd to some, every team, every project and every workplace is primarily a social situation. People are interacting with other people to achieve something for their stakeholders—who are also people!

The SCARF model defines five elements that can be a motivational reward, or a threat to an individual:

• Status
• Certainty
• Autonomy
• Relatedness
• Fairness

A leader who establishes the right foundation for each of these factors will help build a successful and happy group.

The challenge for a leader is that each of these factors can trigger a threat or a reward experience. Insufficient levels will cause resentment (pain). The right levels will cause pleasure. But too much of any (with the possible exception of fairness) can lead to fear or the feeling of repression (pain). The challenge for every leader is to know enough about your team members to hit the sweet spot of “just right.”

Status

Everyone has a deep human drive for self-esteem or competence, but this is almost never assessed on its own. We are social beings, so our sense of competence appears to be deeply connected to others. What we actually measure is status.

Status means where we are positioned in relation to those around us—the pecking order. A person’s perception of status, and any changes in it, will be experienced as a reward or a threat. A sense of increasing status can be more rewarding than money, and a sense of decreasing status can make you feel like your life is in danger.  

There’s no universal scale for status. When you meet someone new and size up your relative importance, you might do so based on who is older, richer, stronger, smarter or funnier. Whatever framework you think is important, when your perceived sense of status goes up or down, an intense emotional response results.

Because of this, people—and teams—go to tremendous extremes to increase or protect their status. As Dr. Rock says, “The desire to increase status is behind many of society’s greatest achievements and some of our darker hours of destruction.” The challenge for every leader is to respect the status of all of the team members and minimize negative movements.

Conversely, thrusting someone into a high-status role they are not prepared for can be equally destructive. This is why public speaking ranks as one of the biggest fears. The spotlight is on the speaker, it is a high status position, and the person is terrified of failing.

Certainty

A sense of uncertainty about the future generates a strong threat response. Your brain detects something is wrong, and your ability to focus on other issues diminishes. Your brain doesn’t like uncertainty—it’s like a type of pain. Certainty, on the other hand, feels rewarding, and we tend to steer toward it, even when it might be better for us to remain uncertain.

Effective leaders provide enough certainty for their followers to experience the feeling or reward, but not so much as to stifle creativity and innovation. Again, this is a balancing act aimed at hitting the sweet spot and needs to be tailored to the characteristics of each individual. Some people crave stability and certainty; others like a degree of challenge (but not too much).

In my next post, I’ll dive into the rest of the SCARF model to finish my discussion of how to motivate people.

By Linda Bourne

How important is happiness to team performance? We’ve all heard that a happy workplace is a productive one. And in fact, studies have demonstrated that a motivated, happy workplace is more productive and has better health outcomes than an unhappy one.

What is less clear is the relationship between happiness, motivation and productivity. Is a happy workplace an essential prerequisite to motivation, or is it a consequence of a motivated team enjoying their work and successes?

The relationship between happiness and motivation is not straightforward. Firefighters dealing with a dangerous wildfire are likely to be highly motivated, risking their lives to save the lives and properties of others. But they aren’t likely to be happy about the situation they are in. If their efforts are successful, there will probably be a very happy celebration. But the prospect of this celebration is unlikely to have any effect on their firefighting efforts.
 

The search for the role of happiness

So what is the role of happiness in team performance?

The elements associated with motivation are well-defined (for a discussion of the basic theories relating to motivation, read this article  (PDF)). But none of these theories includes happiness!

Unhappiness is a powerful de-motivator that has to be removed to allow the motivators to work, but does this flow through to the positive motivator side of the equation? Happiness may be a motivator, or it may be a collateral benefit of other positive motivators.

There are three possible scenarios:

1. The fact that a team is motivated tends to create a happy workplace.
2. Happiness and motivation are independent attributes but may be influenced by the same stimuli.
3. Happiness is a significant facilitator that helps create a motivated team.

My last post on this topic, looking at the Australian Cricket team (PDF), tends to support the proposition that unhappiness is a de-motivator. It argues for option 3, since the new coach brought fun back into the team. Certainly the new approach caused a major change in performance standards; the success identified in 2013 has largely continued through 2016.

What’s not so clear is if the fun factor contributed to the improved motivation and performance or if the successes of the team created happiness. There may even be a combination of both effects in a beneficial feedback loop.

To complicate matters, happiness itself is a difficult concept. Happiness can range from the wild euphoria of a team that’s just scored a winning goal to the contentment and inner peace sought by Buddhists.

Then there’s biology. The brain seems to be designed to keep our level of happiness relatively constant. So while a positive stimulus will generate a short burst of happiness for everyone, the increase in happiness starts from the person’s innate baseline and reverts back to that setting after a short period.

So what to do?

My recommendations for using happiness to help motivate your team are in two parts:

• First be aware of unhappiness. It’s a powerful de-motivator, and its causes need to be addressed. Everyone will experience unhappiness differently, so careful observation is needed to notice what’s occurring and then alleviate the issues.
• Seeking to create happiness is less important. If you focus on the other elements needed to create a motivated team—such as setting clear objectives, recognizing good performance, offering the ability to develop and providing a cooperative team environment—then happiness might emerge spontaneously.

How important do you think creating a happy workplace is in the overall quest to motivate your team?