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?

If you listen to business prognosticators, the concept of “mature economies” or “mature markets” comes up pretty regularly. Which means that it has become more and more difficult to squeeze growth out of larger, more mature organizations.

The funny thing is, this is actually a great opportunity for project managers and project leaders around the world to really step in and put their skills to use in a more strategic manner.

Why?         Because a great project leader is a strategic project leader. Strategic project leaders understand the business at a deeper level and can anticipate decisions. More importantly, they have access to the goals and vision for an organization’s growth, which enables them to contribute to that goal.

So what do strategic project leaders look for when they are attempting to manage growth in mature companies?

Here are three ideas:

1. Align thinking with the organization’s growth goals: You have to gain an understanding of where the organization is going, as a baseline for success. This isn’t as hard as it might seem. Many organizations, at the beginning of the fiscal year, quarter or calendar year, share goals for the coming year (or, if you are lucky, the next several years).

This information will provide you the groundwork for better discussions as certain projects move from concept to planning and beyond. 

2. Anticipate ways projects can or can’t create additional value: Here’s the challenge. It is easy to mail this stuff in. I’m just a project manager, right?

If you want to be a leader in your organization and manage for growth—growth for your company and your career—you can’t allow this thinking to infiltrate your mindset.

To manage for growth, especially in tough markets, you have to be able to anticipate where your business is going and where opportunity lies. Then you need to be able to take action to apply these ideas to your projects and advocate for them in a strong, reasoned manner.

 3. Frame your ideas in a context that fits executive and stakeholder goals: As project leaders, your goal is often to be the point from which information flows in and out of the project. To put it another way, you are the sounding board for people that have an interest in your project’s success.

This means that you have the unique position of knowing as much or more about the project than anyone in the organization.

This gives you tremendous power and provides an opportunity to push the project in ways that will help squeeze out the maximum benefit for you and your organization.

This requires you to advocate for an idea, present your ideas in a way that are relevant to the context of the goals of your business, and have a business case behind them so that they appear logical.

Are these conversations easy? No, but are they worthwhile? Absolutely!

If you are serious about managing for growth, you can start now from where you are, but the actions you take are going to have to be more business focused. Fortunately, many of you already have the tools to take action—no mandate necessary.

I look forward to your thoughts on managing growth.