Voices on Project Management

by Cyndee Miller

Executive coaches love their sports metaphors. But for me, a good PMO is a lot like a killer band. From the singer to the manager to the unheralded sound-check guy, it takes everybody doing their part to get results.

At BC Hydro—this year’s PMO of the Year—everyone from the document controllers and project managers to the project directors and portfolio managers are working together.

“It’s really them who won the award,” said Ken McKenzie, vice president of capital infrastructure project delivery for the Canadian utility. “They put in the hard work every day.”

And wow, are they delivering results: In the last five years, over the course of 563 projects, BC Hydro’s projects came in an aggregate CA$12 million under budget.

Like any successful band, the BC Hydro PMO also relies on buy-in from above. “Without that executive sponsorship it’s really difficult. They’re a big part of why our PMO is so successful.”

Mr. McKenzie graciously recognized the other two finalists as well: “I’d really like to congratulate the other two finalists, Entel and Parker Aerospace.”

He encouraged other organizations to pursue the award—and not just for the cred. “It makes companies get an external perspective,” he said. “It’s a fantastic process, and I learned a lot about our PMO in the process.”

For an inside look at the three PMOs, check out videos on PMI’s YouTube channel and look for in-depth case studies on each of them in upcoming PM Network issues.

That’s an official wrap on this year’s coverage. Fear not, we’ll be headed back for more PMO Symposium action 5-8 November in Houston, Texas, USA.

by Cyndee Miller

Sizing people up doesn’t require much time—13 milliseconds to be precise. That’s how long it takes for people to read and judge facial expressions. (I really hope your face doesn’t smack of boredom as you read this.)

People say a lot without saying anything at all, leadership expert Olivia Fox Cabane said during the PMO Symposium closing keynote. And if PMO leaders want to start having better (read: more inspiring) relationships, they’d be wise to take a good, long look in the mirror.

Let’s step back for a bit, though. Rather, let’s step back hundreds of thousands of years. What’s driving all this insta-judginess? It’s evolution, specifically the necessity of developing flight or fight responses back in the time when risk registers were mainly filled with saber-tooth tigers.

Sure, we’ve come a long way, but we still make judgments every single day. Consider how you sit during a meeting. Not making eye contact? That can come across as being untrustworthy. Taking up a lot of space? That comes across as a play for dominance, for better or worse.

It can’t be all about you, you, you, either. The best leaders look out for those they manage and make sure they don’t succumb to things like the dreaded imposter syndrome. You know it, the sinking feeling that deep down, you have no idea what you’re doing in your job and it’s just a matter of moments before you get exposed. “At least 80 percent of your junior members feel it,” Ms. Cabane says.

Thing is, that’s a natural emotion. (And self-criticism isn’t necessarily all terrible—doubt leads to a desire to work harder, which leads to better skills, etc.) But as a leader, even if you can’t get rid of that tugging notion inside your protégé, you can help them handle self-doubt. “You’re the person they look to to react to how they should feel about something.”

Ultimately, Ms. Cabane said, the secret to relationships isn’t about wit or wordplay. It’s about attitude. If you want to make a difference, Ms. Cabane says, treat whoever you’re talking to “as if they are the most fascinating individual you’ve ever met.”

Unless that’s a saber tooth tiger. If that’s the case—run.

by Cyndee Miller

We’ve all been there. You’re sitting in a meeting. Someone throws out an idea. It’s weak. Actually, it kinda stinks. Yet somehow, it spreads like wildfire when others—perhaps you—had ideas that were objectively better.

Even out of the context of conference rooms, the phenomenon begs some fundamental questions: Why do people dress the way they do, buy the cars they do, even like the music they do? The answers may lie less in the products themselves and more with the context surrounding them, according to Jonah Berger, PhD, author of Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces That Shape Behavior.

Say you’re buying a car. “You’re more likely to buy a car if it’s on sale or if you need a new one. That’s obvious,” Dr. Berger said in his day two keynote as PMO Symposium^®. “But if your neighbor bought a new car, you’re also 8 percent more likely to buy one.”

That right there is what he dubs social influence. It isn’t random. It’s not luck or chance, he said. It’s a powerful tool—but only if it’s done right.

Let’s go back to that meeting, for example. It doesn’t have to go down like that. If you’re looking to shape group decisions, Dr. Berger would prescribe speaking first and then building consensus by making it visible.

He also recommends taking the Goldilocks approach. “If it’s too different, people don’t want to adopt it. If it’s too similar, people don’t want to change.” The sweet spot? “If you can be optimally distinct, you’ll be more likely to change behavior,” Dr. Berger said.

This motivation business is nuanced stuff.

Say you’ve got a team that’s struggling. It’s natural to wonder why it can’t be more like that other team, the one that’s killing it. Just keep that comparison to yourself. Being down one point at the half in a basketball game, for example, can give a team just the kick in the @#$% it needs.

Indeed, Dr. Berger says teams down one point at halftime are actually favored to win games. But if a team’s down 15? Forget about it.

The idea is to harness proximal peers. “If you’re too far behind, you’re going to be demotivated,” Dr. Berger says. So if there are eight divisions within the PMO, don’t compare the bottom-performing unit to the top one.

And I bet you thought social influence was just for celebs and politicians. Maybe it’s time to try it out in the real world.

by Cyndee Miller

Leadership, innovation, organizational culture. They’re all fine and noble topics. But people usually talk about them in the kind of lofty language that makes me want to punch them.

Don’t get me wrong. I love a good corporate comeback tale—as long as there’s a good dollop of real talk.

Sometimes, it can be all unicorns and kittens. I want the dirt.

Drawing on his experience holding down C-suite slots at Boeing, 3M and GE, Jim McNerney got the mix right during the opening keynote at the 2016 PMO Symposium^®—providing a solid gut-check on how even the heavy hitters lose their way.

“It’s the paradox of innovation. The most difficult projects are often the ones most worth doing,” he said.

Look no further than Boeing’s Dreamliner 787.

The Dreamliner was supposed to be just that—an airliner delivering on every aviation dream: It was going to be more fuel efficient, require less maintenance, create more space for customers, produce less humidity—maybe even cure world hunger.

Airlines lined up to put down deposits.

In reality, it was much more a dream deferred. Customers waited. And waited. And waited as the company blew past deadline after deadline.

Boeing simply flew too close to the sun.

“There were too many firsts at once,” said Mr. McNerney. “There was some degree of hubris. We made the cardinal mistake of promising a product before we had a handle on the schedule.”

But while the push for innovation might have been excessive, Boeing was able to right the ship—err, plane.

The first step back from the brink: Think beyond process and focus on molding the right culture—one that values innovation as a team sport, he said.

That kind of transformation is not going to just magically happen “by edict, email or issuing orders,” Mr. McNerney said. “You do it one conference room at a time.”

In the case of the Dreamliner, leadership recognized its mistakes and took corrective actions to get back on track. That included being brutally honest with customers about exactly what was wrong. Boeing also realized it overvalued heroic circumventing and undervalued process, so it put the focus on gated processes and risk management.

Mr. McNerney’s prior company, 3M, was no slouch on the innovation front, but it, too, had some issues. Early in his tenure, the company was creating some 3,000 new products a year, pushing quantity over quality. And business outcomes suffered.

Mr. McNerney set out to redefine what success meant: Would the proposed new product create growth for 3M? Only those projects that got affirmative answers warranted a green light. But he also emphasized that “no” wasn’t negative. It was about valuing 3M’s strategic alignment above all else.

That, dear readers, is called leadership. And for that, Mr. McNerney relied on some advice from his father: You have to decide early on whether you want to lead or to follow.

So, what do you want to do?

Author and activist Wes Moore closed out congress to a standing ovation.

By Cyndee Miller

Not to get all sappy, but everybody needs a sense of purpose, a reason to get up in the morning.

Projects—and the people managing them—are no different. Each project has a purpose, and will be judged by how well it delivers on that purpose.

But for the maximum ROI, project managers must stay focused on the people who will benefit from their work, said Wes Moore, founder of education initiative BridgeEdu, in Tuesday’s closing keynote.

“Often it is the people we will never meet…whose lives will be immeasurably better because of the time and diligence and heart we put into [our work],” said the author and activist on Tuesday.

Project managers spend plenty of time thinking about stakeholders—how to manage them, how to communicate with them, how to serve them. But some things don’t fit in a risk register or a project charter. In the midst of all that documentation, project managers shouldn’t lose sight of the human element.

“We live in a completely interconnected society,” Mr. Moore said. “The only way success means something is when our success doesn’t just have a personal definition.”

Looking forward to more interesting insights from speakers and sessions at next year’s newly rebranded and renamed PMI^® Global Conference in my hometown of Chicago, Illinois, USA. See you there. (And yes, I am more than happy to serve as your personal pizza and craft cocktail adviser.)