Voices on Project Management

By Lynda Bourne

Whether an individual, group or organization, each stakeholder has a unique and evolving set of expectations and perceptions.

To effectively engage with and influence this diverse community, traditional “one size fits all” approaches to project communications—such as regular reports—need to be replaced by a structured methodology supported by adequate resources that consider the complexities of all stakeholders. 

In earlier posts, I’ve discussed the relationship between stakeholder perceptions and project success and the three types of stakeholder communication. Of those three types, project relations (meaning PR/marketing) and traditional reporting cover the needs of noncritical stakeholders.

This post is focused on the targeted communication needed to change the attitude or behaviour of the small group of critical stakeholders who need to be doing something differently to support the successful delivery of your project.

Five Steps to Changing Stakeholder Behaviour

Each targeted communication is focused on one stakeholder to achieve a desired change in his or her attitude and/or behaviour. For example, maybe a functional manager needs to stop obstructing your project and actively support the loan of some key resources for critical work.

The first stepin this process is defining precisely what you need from the stakeholder. You also need to prioritize objectives so you focus your efforts on the most important changes you need at this time.

The next stepis to describe and understand the elements of the stakeholder’s uniqueness. These elements include national, professional and generational culture traits, as well as gender, personality and “their reality” (how they see the world).

Once you know what you want and understand the best approaches to use to engage the person, the third step is planning the communication strategy by designing carefully targeted information exchanges.

Strategies for achieving this can range from casual coffee meetings to formal presentations using a range of different media and messengers. You can approach some stakeholders directly, while others need to be influenced through your network of contacts. Any organizational currency you or your team have accrued can be highly beneficial, but needs to be spent carefully.

Then comes the fourth step: implement the plan and communicate!

The final stepin the process is to assess the effectiveness of the communication and adjust the plan as necessary to ensure that the stakeholder becomes appropriately engaged in supporting the project’s objectives.

The keys to effective stakeholder engagement are the strength of the relationship you have in place and mutuality—meaning that both your project and the stakeholder need to benefit from the engagement.

This process may sound like hard work. It is. But it is far better to invest in effective stakeholder engagement to make your project successful than to under-invest and fail because you do not have the support and resources needed for success.

How much effort do you put into planned and targeted communication?

By Lynda Bourne

The project management world and the wider business community are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of soft skills. However, as I know only too well from working with clients through my project management consultancy, there’s a big difference between managers being aware of their importance and actually investing in developing the capabilities.

Before most organizations (and individuals) will invest in improving soft-skill capabilities, their value needs to be demonstrated.

A recent report prepared for McDonald’s UK provides a solid foundation for understanding the importance of soft skills to the U.K. economy. It’s likely indicative of the situation in similar economies such as the United States, Canada and Australia.

Soft skills fall into six interlinked sets of competencies, according to a Michigan State University study, “Comparative Analysis of Skills: What Is Important for New Graduates”:

·         Communication skills

·         Decision-making/problem-solving skills

·         Self-management skills

·         Teamwork skills

·         Professionalism skills

·         Leadership skills

To value these skills within the overall economy required some extensive analysis. The overall productivity in the economy was disaggregated into the five drivers of productivity: investment, skills, innovation, entrepreneurship and competition.

The skills driver was then further disaggregated into parts: technical skills, technology skills, literacy, numeracy and soft skills. Soft skills covered the range of capabilities outlined above.

Based on this analysis, soft skills were found to underpin around 6.5 percent of the U.K. economy, and this contribution was expected to grow strongly over the next five years.

The research highlighted that employers rated soft skills above academic qualifications, with 97 percent believing these skills are important to current business success. Worryingly, 75 percent of employers say there is a soft skills deficit within the U.K. workforce. 

The report also quotes a range of surveys from the U.S. showing soft skills were ranked ahead of or equal to other competencies, but many job applicants don’t list soft skills in their résumés.

In the U.K., 54 percent of employees have never included soft skills on their CV, and one in five felt they would be uncomfortable discussing their soft skills with an employer.

Deficiencies in the U.K.’s current stock of soft skills were found to impose severe penalties on the economy, causing major problems for business and resulting in diminished productivity, competitiveness and profitability. And over half a million U.K. workers will be significantly held back by soft skills deficits by 2020, according to the research.

Soft skills matter and contribute significantly to productivity. But there is a measurable—and widening—skills gap, and soft skills are underrepresented in skills development initiatives probably because results are hard to measure. Changing this attitude is a major challenge for organizations, business and individuals seeking career development.

How do you think soft skills can be developed? 

By Lynda Bourne

Are your stakeholders biased? The short answer is: yes. To make matters worse, your opinions of your stakeholders, your team and yourself are also biased.

As in all relationships, complete objectivity is nearly impossible to achieve in stakeholder relationships. We are all innately biased. We must be aware of our biases and work to minimize their effect on decisions, actions and communication. We also need to allow for the effect of bias in the reactions of stakeholders toward our communications and project, and seek out a diverse group of team members to mitigate biases.

Here are some of the more important biases in the way we interact with stakeholders.

Confirmation bias.We tend to proactively seek out information that confirms our existing beliefs and associate with people who think like us. While this makes sense in one respect, it also means we subconsciously begin to ignore or dismiss anything that threatens our views.

Given that most project managers, sponsors and steering committees start out thinking their project is going to be a great success, confirmation bias can cause them to ignore the subtle early warning signs of problems until it’s too late.

The comment from the project scheduler about the loss of float on noncritical activities may be caused by a poor process and the scheduler’s lack of skills, or it may be an early warning of a lack of productivity that will emerge later as a major project delay. If you believe the project is going great, confirmation bias will lead you to dismiss the warning, while an awareness of the bias may allow you to investigate further.

Confirmation bias also affects our memories. In a 1979 experiment at the University of Minnesota, participants read about a woman named Jane who acted extroverted in some situations and introverted in others.

Later, the participants were divided into two groups. One group was asked if Jane would be suited to a job as a librarian; the other was asked about her having a job as a real-estate agent. The librarian group remembered Jane as being introverted and said she wouldn’t be suited to a real-estate job. The real-estate group did exactly the opposite: They remembered Jane as extroverted and said she would be suited to real estate. 

The “swimmer’s body illusion.”This occurs when we confuse selection factors with results. Rolf Dobelli’s book, The Art of Thinking Clearly, explains how our ideas about talent and training are completely off-track.

Professional swimmers don’t have perfect bodies because they train extensively; they are good swimmers because of their physiques. Similarly, are the top-performing universities the best schools, or are they able to choose the best students (because of their reputation), who then do well regardless of the school’s influence?

When reviewing project success and failure, one of the key questions is: Was the project manager the factor that created the success or failure, or was the project predestined to one outcome?

Consider two organizations that decided to undertake identical projects with a normalized value of US$1 million. Organization A assessed its project and set the budget at US$800,000. Organization B assessed its project and set the budget at US$1.2 million.

Organization A’s team ended up spending US$900,000—a cost overrun of US$100,000, nominally a project failure. Organization B’s team spent US$1.1 million—under budget by US$100,000, nominally a project success.

But considering that both projects produced the same output, which project manager was actually most successful—the one that exceeded stakeholders’ expectations by coming in under budget, or the one that delivered the same results with a smaller budget?

The sunk-cost fallacy. The term “sunk cost” refers to any cost (monetary, time or effort) that has been paid already and cannot be recovered.

As psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains in his book Thinking Fast and Slow, organisms that placed more urgency on avoiding threats than they did on maximizing opportunities were more likely to pass on their genes.

Over time this has become an automatic, subconscious bias—the prospect of losses is a more powerful motivator on everyone’s behavior than the promise of gains.

Consider this scenario: You buy a movie ticket only to realize the movie is terrible. You could stay and watch it to “get your money’s worth” since you’ve already paid for the ticket (sunk-cost fallacy), or you could leave the theater and use that time to do something you’ll actually enjoy.

More than half the population will waste their afternoon by staying to avoid the loss. 

The anchoring effect. The anchoring effect works like this: Rather than making a decision based on pure value, we factor in comparative values.

Behavioral economist Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational, uses the following experiment to illustrate this. He sells two kinds of chocolates in a booth: Hershey’s Kisses and Lindt Truffles. The Kisses are priced at 1 cent each, while the truffles are 15 cents each.

Considering the quality differences between the chocolates and their normal prices, the truffles were a great deal, and the majority of visitors to the booth chose the truffles.

For the next stage of his experiment, Ariely lowered the prices by one cent each. So now the Kisses were free, and the truffles cost 14 cents. Of course, the truffles were even more of a bargain now, but since the Kisses were free, most people chose those instead.

From a project perspective, the first price or cost estimate will always anchor everyone’s consideration of “better or worse.”

These are just four examples out of many hundreds of biases. The good news is you can seriously limit their effect by being aware of the problem and embracing diversity. Everyone has their own set of biases; working with a diverse group of people can balance out many.

Conversely, taking the comfortable option and surrounding yourself with people who think like you will amplify the effect of biases.

How objective do you think you are? 

By Lynda Bourne

The start of a new year always brings a focus on change and opportunity. So with 2015 now underway, it’s timely to ask: What are the responsibilities of the project manager when it comes to dealing with change?

        The answer depends on what aspect of change you’re dealing with and what stage of the project you’re in.

All projects are initiated to instigate change — to create a new product, service or result. If the project is to realize its intended value, the change has to meet a need within the stakeholder community.

Determining this need is primarily the responsibility of the project sponsor and the change manager. The only responsibility of project managers at this stage of the project life cycle is to understand exactly what they are being asked to deliver and to highlight any omissions or issues to the sponsor.

        The next step is traditional change management, which involves preparing the affected stakeholders for the new product, service or process, fostering a desire to use it once delivered and supporting the transition from the old way of working to the new way so the intended benefits can be realized on a sustained basis.

This step will be the responsibility of the change manager; organizational change management requires a separate set of skills to project management and on anything other than a relatively small change initiative involves a significant commitment of time. If the project manager is expected to fulfil the change management role, the project charter and resourcing need to allow for this additional work. More often, the change manager is part of an overall program of work, or may work for the sponsor.

In my experience it is very unusual for the project manager to work for a change manager or a change manager to work for a project manager. However, if the organization is going to realize the maximum benefits from the project, the change manager and project manager need to be highly supportive of each other’s work and their responsibility for benefits management and realisation need to be clearly understood.

The responsibility of the project manager through the life of the project is to be aware of the needs of the change manager and adapt the work of the project to maximize the opportunity to realize benefits.

While many aspects of change management are outside of the project manager’s responsibilities, project change control is not.The project manager typically does not have the authority to approve most changes, but managing the project change control process is his or her job.

        The project manager, supported by the project team, is responsible for the following:

1. Identifying that a change is required, requested or has already occurred (or is occurring)
2. Scoping the change and understanding its effect on project objectives
3. Preparing recommendations regarding the change
4. Identifying the appropriate person with authority to approve the change. For internal changes, this may be the project manager. For all other changes it is usually the sponsor, a change control board, the customer or the designated customer’s representative (e.g., a superintending engineer).
5. Cooperating with and supporting the change authority in its decision-making
6. Managing the consequences of the change by implementing approved changes and ensuring rejected changes are not implemented

The connection between change management and change control is that every change that is managed through project change control processes affects some aspect of the project’s outputs. Therefore each change should be considered from the perspective of stakeholder needs and the overall realization of benefits through the organization’s change management processes and ultimate use of the project’s deliverables.

        Managing the project life cycle from idea creation to benefits realization is increasingly being referred to as “the management of projects.” The difficult bit in the middle of actually creating the project deliverables is “project management.”

To successfully implement change and maximize value realized by the organization, both “the management of projects” and “project management” need to be synchronized.

A Level 5 Leader (L5L) is an individual who blends extreme personal humility with intense professional will. The characteristics and success of these leaders were first identified by Jim Collins in 2001. They formed a central plank in his best-selling book Good to Great.

The discovery of Level 5 leadership derived from a research project that Collins began in 1996, when he set out to answer one question: Can a good company become a great company and, if so, how? The answer was the concept of a Level 5 Leader.

The L5L sits on top of a hierarchy of capabilities and is, according to Collins’ research, a necessary requirement for transforming an organization from good to great. Individuals do not need to proceed sequentially through each of the lower four levels of the hierarchy to reach the top, but to be a full-fledged L5L requires the capabilities of all the lower levels, plus the special characteristics of Level 5. The characteristics are:

• Level 5 Executive:Builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical combination of personal humility plus professional will.
• Level 4 Effective Leader:Catalyzes commitment to and vigorous pursuit of a clear and compelling vision; stimulates the group to high performance standards.
• Level 3 Competent Manager:Organizes people and resources toward the effective and efficient pursuit of predetermined objectives.
• Level 2 Contributing Team Member:Contributes to the achievement of group objectives; works effectively with others in a group setting.
• Level 1 Highly Capable Individual:Makes productive contributions through talent, knowledge, skills and good work habits.

When Good to Great was published in 2001, the concept of Level 5 leadership was counterintuitive, even countercultural. People generally assumed that transforming companies from good to great required larger-than-life leaders with big personalities like Lee Iacocca and Jack Welch, who made headlines and became celebrities. And while Level 5 leadership is not the only requirement for transforming a good company into a great one—other factors include getting the right people “on the bus” (and the wrong people “off the bus”) and creating a culture of discipline—Collins’ research showed L5L to be essential. 

Thirteen years later, what’s this got to do with project management?

The answer is that rather than focusing on being the “project management hero,” project managers can apply the lessons of Level 5 Leadership to take a project from good to great!

Some of the key traits of an L5L are:

• Humility. Whenever your team members have success, make sure credit goes to them for their hard work. But as a leader, you need to take responsibility for your team’s efforts, particularly when things go wrong.
• Asks for help.Knowing when and how to ask for help lets you call upon the expertise of someone stronger in an area than you are. The result? The entire team or organization wins, not just you.
• Takes responsibilityfor the team’s mistakes or failings.
• Discipline.When you commit to a course of action, no matter how difficult, stick to your resolve. It’s always important to listen to differing opinions, but don’t let fear be your driving motivator when you make, or change, a decision.
• Takes the time to find the right people.And then helps them reach their full potential.
• Leads with passion.When you demonstrate to your team members that you love and believe in what you’re doing, they will too.

Becoming a L5L is not easy. But rather than being a hero fighting to make your project a success, shifting to Level 5 leadership allows you to be successful while benefiting your organization and team.