Voices on Project Management

David Robertson talks Legos at Congress on Monday.

By Cyndee Miller

Confession time: I am bored with disruption. A few years ago the business press and management consultant gurus started issuing decrees about “disruptive innovation.” Stern warnings ensued: Disrupt yourself lest you be disrupted!

Oh, and this was all wrapped up in the cult of personality around Steve Jobs and Apple. Now I’ve got nothing against Jobs and the company he built — I’m typing this on a MacBook while compulsively checking messages on my iPhone. I just don’t think he owns innovation, whether it’s disruptive or not.

And as keynoter David Robertson pointed out, Mr. Job’s early path was more about slow and steady innovation. Organizations can’t all be disruptive all the time — and they don’t need to be. Every innovation doesn’t have to be revolutionary, leading to a patent or creating a new product category. Innovations don’t even have to be incremental advances, he said.

“Most of us can’t spend most of our time focusing on those two ways of innovation,” said Robertson, author of Brick by Brick: How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry. “Our customers count on us doing better versions of our current products. Business models depend on revenue from those.”

Which brings us to the Lego Group, a veritable case study in how sustainable success can mean simply getting back to basics.

The Danish toy company flirted with bankruptcy in 2003 after spending the previous five years trying to aggressively reinvent itself. Lots of new products moved away from the traditional Lego look and feel. The company lost sight of its core identity and customers, many of whom were left confused.

After making huge lay-offs, taking out emergency loans and selling its headquarters, the company goes “through a deep reconsideration of who they are as a company. They learn something from that brush with bankruptcy,” Robertson said.

Lego’s “disruptive revolutionary phase” had resulted in “variety without value.” Looking for supply chain sanity and consistency, the company simplified its products and centralized approval of any new Lego elements.

Its innovation was to focus on the classic product lines we’ve known for generations — Lego and Duplo bricks — while boosting the storytelling around them. Voilà: a whole universe of tie-in accessories around the bricks is born. Lego-themed books, video games, even bed sheets. And yup, I’ve purchased the Harry Potter and the Batman Legos.

Then there’s the massively successful The Lego Movie from 2014, which brought kids and adults together to revel in what Lego bricks are ultimately all about: imaginative play. It was a stroke of marketing genius. And it helped power Lego to become the second-biggest toy company in the world. Revenue and profits have soared through the roof for years.

“Innovation flourishes when the space for it is limited,” Robertson said. “When you constrain, sometimes you get not just great innovation, but more profitable innovation.”

He left congress attendees with a fitting metaphor: If disruptive innovation is “fighting” existing customers, he said, then Lego’s way is more like dating them.

“Think of innovation as dating your customer. Understand who they are and what they care about. See beyond your products to understand what will make their lives better.”

And then, everything is indeed awesome.

The Scott Brothers — Drew at left, Jonathan at right —on stage at PMI Global Congress 2015 —North America.

By Cyndee Miller

My last trip to Disney World was all about fun — took the nephew on the Mad Tea Cup ride, watched the parade, all the standard tourist stuff. But this time around, I’m here for PMI^® Global Congress — North America at Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort in Orlando, Florida, USA. And I’m seeing Walt Disney’s vast kingdom from a new angle: as one of the most successful projects of all time.

Talk about benefits realization. With more than 52 million visitors each year, Disney World ranks as the most popular vacation resort in the world. It’s also not a bad place to bring together project and program managers to trade tips on how to transform a big project vision into reality.

And that can take some time. Even the happiest place on earth wasn’t built overnight.

During a freewheeling congress keynote, Drew and Jonathan Scott — the crown princes of TV home renovation projects — noted that even Disney started small.

“Look at something as massive as Disney world. It didn’t start out all of the sudden like this. You build and you build and you build, and it gets bigger as you go,” said Jonathan Scott during the opening keynote with his twin brother, Drew.

You probably know the Scott Brothers as stars of the hit HGTV shows “Property Brothers” and “Brother vs. Brother.” But they’re not just budding media moguls — they’re entrepreneurs who got their start in real estate renovation projects. They can talk and walk the project talk, from contingency funds to optimizing delivery processes.

“Organization is the most important thing,” Jonathan said. “It’s hard to get it set up in the beginning, but once you have the process and once you’re organized, it’s a lot easier to maintain that process than it was to come up with it in the first place.”

Still, organizations must remain agile. “We’d never be able to [grow rapidly] unless we were constantly evolving our practices and processes along the way,” he added.

Drew said smart evolution demands constant curiosity. Don’t be afraid to fail on a project — as long as you learn from it. The best leaders are humble and unafraid of confronting problems, he said.

“None of us know everything, and if you think you do, I don’t want to work with you.  … The sign of a great manager is the ability to bring in people to do tasks better than they can,” Drew said.

The brothers have built their production company — and executed more than 500 home renovation projects — by sticking with a “no BS” communications policy. Meaning: Tell it like it is. “If there’s something that’s bothering us, we just get it out. And we always emerge with a stronger team,” Drew said.

Eighteen years after their first real-estate project, the Scott Brothers can sum up their project management approach in three words: divide and conquer. Like any longtime colleagues, they’ve learned to trust their teams — and each other —  to get the job done.

As with most siblings, humor helps — and keeps work fun.

Right, Jonathan?

“I know what Drew’s strengths are, and he knows how I have so many more strengths.”

Leaders of Chevron's El Segundo Refinery Coke Drum Reliability Project accept the Project of the Year award on 10 October 2015.

By Cyndee Miller

No team is going to get very far without a mission — and it better be good enough (and clear enough) to convince people it’s worth the effort. There are way too many times when I feel like I’ve nailed it. And then all I get is blank stares. So I’ve got to give credit to Chevron, this year’s Project of the Year winner.

The company knew it had to safely replace six huge coke drums at its refinery in El Segundo, California, USA. And it knew that would take a lot of hard work from everyone on the team. So it made sure that message got through  — loud and clear.

“Early in our project scoping phase, we set a very powerful vision for our project,” said Chevron’s Greg Roos, PMP, while accepting the honor at PMI’s Professional Awards Gala in Orlando, Florida, USA. “The key line was at the very end, and we met with every project team member personally on this: ‘Be a difference maker.’ This really resonated with the team … from leaders to craft workers.”

The solutions rolled in right from the start as the team plotted how to get the six new 96-foot (29-meter) tall coke drums to the refinery. Instead of transporting them from the Port of Los Angeles through one of the world’s most congested cities, the team got creative.

By partnering with a local marina, the team cut the travel route. And then, by working with community stakeholders, it managed to turn the road closures necessary to transport the drums into parade-like events. Once they arrived at the refinery, the team used massive cranes to install the drums — with Chevron again making it abundantly clear that safety came first. The team rallied and completed the project four months ahead of schedule and US$7 million under budget. (Get a look inside the project with this video and the cover story of next month’s PM Network^®.)

The truly amazing thing is that Chevron wasn’t alone in executing on a bold project vision. The other two finalists had some pretty fantastic results, too:

Oregon Transportation Investment Act III State Bridge Delivery Program, Salem, Oregon, USA: The Oregon Department of Transportation worked with a joint venture of Fluor Corp. and HDR Engineering Inc.  to deliver the U.S. state’s largest infrastructure investment in 50 years: a 10-year, US$1.3 billion initiative to repair and replace 365 bridges.

In the first public-private partnership of its kind in the state, the team bundled certain bridge projects into sub-programs and then secured buy-in through customized communications to targeted stakeholder groups. The end result? The program closed US$45 million under budget — and Oregon state officials look to it as a new blueprint for infrastructure project delivery. Check out a video on the project.

River Corridor Base Scope Project, Richland, Washington, USA: Washington Closure Hanford LLC — a joint venture of AECOM, Bechtel and CH2M — tackled a major cleanup of 220 square miles (570 square kilometers) of a former nuclear production site. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the 9-year US$2 billion project included disarming two nuclear reactors and remediating 9 million tons of toxic waste.

With regulators, local residents and Native American tribes watching closely, the team delivered the project two years ahead of schedule and US$227 million under budget. And it did it while maintaining the best safety record of any DOE deactivation and decommissioning closure project. (Watch a video about the project here.)

For more on these projects, look for in-depth feature stories in upcoming issues of PM Network^® .

By Jen Skrabak, PMP, PfMP

I am amazed that so many projects and programs (and by extension, portfolios) are still so challenged. Forty-four percent of projects are unsuccessful, and we waste $109 million for each $1 billion in project expenditures, according to the 2015 edition of PMI’s Pulse of the Profession.

One solution that the report identifies is mature portfolio management processes. With that in mind, I’ve come up with a list of five things that unsuccessful portfolio managers do—and what they should focus on doing instead.

1.  Worry about things they can’t change.

Unsuccessful portfolio managers worry about the past or dwell on problems outside their immediate influence. Successful portfolio managers learn from the past and move on. Sometimes, failures turn into lessons that create the foundation for future growth and opportunity.

Portfolio managers should stay focused on what can we influence, negotiate and communicate, as well as what we can start, stop and sustain. Every month or quarter, assess the processes, programs and projects in your span of control. Decide which to start, stop and sustain, and develop action plans around those decisions (including dates, resources required and collaborators).

2.  Give up when things get too hard.

It may be easy to throw in the towel when conditions become challenging. But the hallmark of a good portfolio manager is the ability to find solutions.

Sometimes, our immediate reaction to a proposal is to think the timeframes or goals are not possible. However, when we get the team together to focus on what can be done, we come up with creative solutions. It’s necessary to gather the facts and do the analysis instead of jumping to conclusions.

3.  Set unattainable goals.

There’s a difference between a stretch goal and an impossible one. Sometimes, projects or programs don’t start off as unattainable (see #2 above) or undoable, but they become so.

Although we may be good at starting projects or programs, there’s not enough emphasis on stopping them. The environment (internal or external) may have changed, key resources may no longer be available, organizational priorities may have shifted, or the business buy-in might take too long. Rather than calling attention to the situation and recommending a “no go,” unsuccessful portfolio managers tend to press on with blinders. This wastes time and resources.

Once I was managing a $500 million portfolio of international expansion programs and projects. The portfolio sponsor told me, “I want to know if we’re falling off the cliff.” Although we hope our programs or projects never get to that point, his words did clearly specify the role I was supposed to play.

4.  Stay in your comfort zone.

It’s easy to create a portfolio in which the potential for risk and failure is low. But that means we may be missing out on opportunities for innovation or great returns. Advocating change in your portfolio requires taking calculated risks that you can learn from or will pay off in the longer term. The successful portfolio manager will advocate taking good risks (aka opportunities) instead of blindly going forward with bad risks.

Taking advantage of opportunities is the key to transformation and reinvention. It’s essential to any organization that wants to survive long-term. For example, who could’ve predicted just a few years ago that Amazon, Netflix and even YouTube would become rivals to TV and movie studios in providing original entertainment? This required calculated risk taking.

5.  Forget about balance.

Balance is important, whether it’s balancing your portfolio or balancing your work and your life. If you’re not performing your best because you’re not taking care of yourself, it’s going to affect your portfolio. Especially with technology blending our work and personal time, it’s sometimes hard to think about balance. One survey showed that we’re checking our phones up to 150 times per day. But remember the basics: eat well, exercise, take time to de-stress, and set aside time for yourself, family and friends. 

What do you notice unsuccessful portfolio managers do, and what would you recommend instead? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Every project manager has his or her own way of managing projects. Most focus on the project’s needs and manage the team accordingly. But I focus on the team itself to ensure the success of the project.

The reason is simple: A happy team is a productive team. That’s fairly obvious. The point I want to underscore is that project managers have more control over team members’ happiness than one might think. Here are some tips to keep in mind as you work to make your teams motivated and effective.

Team members need to work together well to produce the best work. Good work relationships can result from people who’ve been working together for a long time or from personalities that match. Either way, if you have the luxury of building the team yourself, try matching people accordingly.

If team members are frustrated with one another, it’s your job to step in before it begins to harm the project. Solutions can include conflict resolution or helping the team members discuss issues by acting as a moderator.

Another step toward achieving a happy team is to prevent roadblocks that might slow them down. For example, make sure the project’s documentation is clear to the team. Sometimes what is obvious to you is not necessarily obvious to others. Unclear information can waste time, prevent work from being done or mislead people, causing the need to redo work.

It might also be that team members cannot find the information they need. Make sure to take the extra step to remind them where specific information is when you know they will need it. If you send what they need even before they ask, they keep their momentum rather than stalling while waiting for answers.

Outside sources that frustrate your team can be a little tricky, since these are out of your control. However, there are steps you can take to try to mitigate this: clear and constant communication with third parties, a mitigation plan in case they provide something different from what was expected, and managing the team’s expectations around these third parties.

In the end, managing your projects with a team-first focus isn’t all that different from typical project management. If you always remember that an unhappy team is an unproductive team, it won’t be hard make this approach second nature.

How do you make sure your team is happy?