Voices on Project Management

Last month I went to see a stage adaptation of George Orwell’s masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four at the Melbourne Festival. The experience sparked this question in my mind: Can we learn from the black arts of propaganda showcased in Orwell’s dystopian novel and turn them into assets to enhance our communication and stakeholder engagement activities?

The way words shape people’s thinking is very powerful. This power can be used for both good and bad. Oratory and rhetoric are generally seen as positive motivational and persuasive skills; propaganda is the flip side that misleads and creates false truths.

Can project professionals learn to use these skills to enhance their stakeholder engagement activities—and is this ethical? My feeling is that the ability to persuade stakeholders to help you be successful is a positive and ethical skill provided it’s used for the greater good.

Orwell is famous for two novels, Animal Farm published in 1945 and Nineteen Eighty-Four (often written as 1984) published in 1949. Both were focused on the evil of totalitarian regimes, but Nineteen Eighty-Four goes beyond politics to look at the process of manipulating the way people think, or more precisely, how to use language to prevent people from thinking. “The Principles of Newspeak” are defined in an appendix to 1984 (and therefore few people notice them). But reading them reframes the whole book.

The importance of Nineteen Eighty-Four as a classic 20^th century novel can be measured by the number of its terms and concepts that are still part of our language today. These include Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime and thoughtpolice, as well as the adjective Orwellian, which describes official deception and manipulation by the state.

What I find fascinating are the parallels between Newspeak and modern adaptations of language, particularly that often found in SMS (text) messages, and the intention of Newspeak to control thinking.

From the appendix:

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc*, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought—that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc—should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words.

* Ingsoc: The philosophy of The Party, run by Big Brother.

Newspeak was constructed using two fundamental processes:

1. Remove as many words as possible from the language. This reduction of vocabulary was regarded as an end in itself. Newspeak was designed to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum.
2. Abbreviate and amalgamate words to create a simple construct with a precise (usually perverse) meaning. MINILUV (Ministry of Love) was the department focused on maintaining state control over everyone through surveillance by the Thoughtpolice, torture and state killings. MINITRUE was responsible for propaganda and the manipulation of historical records to meet current needs.

Fast-forward to the 21^st century and consider typical text-message acronyms like TMI—KHUF! (Translation: too much information—know how you feel.) 

Of course, one of the big differences is that Newspeak was designed to eliminate creative thought, while the language of SMS and social media users is organic and created and owned by individuals. But is this difference enough to prevent the stifling of creative thought and innovation?

Conversely, one of the ideas in Newspeak that could be adapted to a positive use is the way entities are named. What if we changed the name of PMOs to SPEs: successful project enablers? 

If the SPE staff lived up to that name and helped projects under their control to be successful, wouldn’t that be a good thing? Similarly, why not change the name of the “Monthly report for July” to a “Report on achievements in July”? Could this make the document more interesting and meaningful to those who receive it?  

We know that what things are called affects people’s expectations, a fact not lost on Big Brother. But can the concept be equally useful if used positively to encourage success…or is this too much spin?

What do you think?

By Peter Tarhanidis

New and proliferating digital technologies are giving rise to new competitive businesses while transforming legacy organizations. It’s no longer just about the Internet, but increasingly tech-savvy users and inexpensive smartphones and tablets.

From an organizational perspective, it’s not just a matter of grappling with new technical platforms: The relationship between organizations and their customers is being transformed.

Before, the cornerstone of customer service was the golden rule: treat your customers the way you want to be treated. Customer relationships were facilitated and managed within just a few departments.

Disruptive technologies have enabled a shift to a new paradigm: customer empowerment. This ushered in the new platinum rule: treat your customers the way they want to be treated. Disruptive technologies integrate organizations to their digital customer experience and are simultaneously influenced by social, consumer and professional media portals like Facebook, Yelp, NetPromoter Scores, and LinkedIn.

Now, much of the work and measurement of this activity is shared across the entire supply chain of the customer journey, which requires more cross-team collaboration to report on the customer experience.

So the importation question has become: How can we make the digital customer experience flawless? This is the new competitive differentiator for companies. Those that stand apart in this respect build market leverage.

Project managers are one asset organizations have at their disposal to ensure success with this new digital customer experience dynamic. Here’s a four-stop roadmap for optimizing your organization for the brave new digital world we all live in.

1. Establish a plan to:
   • Identify current customer journey paths.
   • Optimize those paths into one consistent and simple location.
   • Digitize that journey and make it available online, mobile and global.
2. Build the requisite foundation required to sustain the digital journey (e.g., big data analytics, and mobile-first and cloud infrastructure).
3. Transition customers from legacy operating approaches into the new digital journey with a change management plan that leads to sustainable adoption.
4. Improve the experience by acting on key performance metrics that gauge the quality of the customer’s entire journey—don’t just rely on the customer service department for quality control.

How is your organization adapting to the new realities of our digital customer age? Please take a moment and share your thoughts.

By Cyndee Miller

My modus operandi is straight-up realist. But deep down inside, I admit there are times when I think I’m special — that I will somehow emerge as the grand exception to the rule.

We all do.

“People are wildly optimistic about everything,” said author, academic and psychologist Daniel Gilbert, a keynoter at PMO Symposium™. His dispiriting findings show people are terrible at estimating odds because they “confuse the ease of imagining something with the odds of it happening.”

And project, program and portfolio managers have no special powers against optimism bias, either.

One prime example: the infamous Big Dig. The tunnel construction megaproject was originally slated to be finished in 1998. The team’s worst-case scenario? 2000. Its best-case estimate? 1998 — the same as the official completion estimate. Actual completion date? 2006. 

Gilbert pushed symposium attendees to move past wishful thinking and ask themselves: “Have I used my imagination or have I just let it use me?”

For better or worse, my imagination tends to go into overdrive when I see any list of business trends. It’s like catnip for my brain.

As Ford Motor Co.’s resident futurist, closing-day keynoter Sheryl Connelly tries to move the team beyond visions of the future that merely extrapolate from the past.

“My role is to slow down the conversation long enough to say, ‘What are the underlying assumptions upon which you base your plan?’”

In those kinds of discussions, project professionals can’t be afraid to challenge status quo thinking.

“Not for the sake of being the contrarian in the room, but to expand your organization’s eyes to the possibilities, the range of things that can really happen,” she said.

Threats aren’t just coming from the usual competitors anymore. They’re bubbling up from entirely different categories, like how hotel companies didn’t see Airbnb coming, she said.

Echoing Gilbert’s call for realism, Connelly recommended scenario planning across the whole range of possible futures: world peace and vanishing poverty on one end, and cataclysmic suffering and economic depression on the other.

“When you explore these two extreme possibilities, the goal is to try and come up with business plans,” she said. “Solutions can work at either end of the spectrum. If you can do that, then you don’t need to know the future. You just know that you have a really robust plan that can weather just about anything you can imagine.”

Futurist title or not, that’s just solid risk management.

Connelly also offered up four big trends to look for: aging populations, urbanization, talent shortages and girl power. And indeed, we’re already seeing plenty of project management action on those fronts.

As of now, there’s one prediction I’m pretty sure I can make: I’ll be heading to San Diego, California, USA for next year’s symposium on 6-9 November. 

Navy Federal Credit Union's PMO leaders accept the award.

By Cyndee Miller

There’s a big old gap between Project Land and the C-suite. Yet projects, programs and portfolios are how execs get the work done.  And it often falls to the project management offices (PMO) to make that case — because no PMO is going to get very far without backing from the corner office.

So no surprise that while accepting this year’s PMO of the Year Award at PMO Symposium™, one of the first things Kristin Earley of Navy Federal Credit Union singled out was executive support.

“Our CIO and deputy CIO have been the champions in so many forms and have supported all of our initiatives year after year,” said Earley.

With a seat at the executive table, they advocated for growing the PMO to ensure the organization’s IT portfolio remained aligned to strategy — even as it expanded by more than 50 percent. That effort paid off:  The percentage of projects closing according to plan jumped from 55 percent to 83 percent year-over-year.

“We’ve reached the point of becoming the backbone of project delivery,” said Earley.

And in a lovely twist of fate, the award was presented on the U.S.’s Veterans Day holiday, a fitting tribute to the PMO’s work. “Our mission is easy to get behind,” she said. “We serve the military and their families.”

Earley also graciously recognized the other two finalists for the award: Ticketmaster International and Symcor. Look for in-depth case studies of Navy Federal and the two finalists in upcoming issues of PM Network. And check out videos of each on PMI’s YouTube channel.

Anthony Gaytor of HP on stage at PMI's PMO Symposium™ on Tuesday.

By Cyndee Miller 

Have you ever stood in the grocery store, staring at 18 different varieties of Greek yogurt, paralyzed by choice? I have. We live in a world of ever-growing choice and complexity — and it’s making me crave simplicity.

Now we’re talking about my measly US$1.50 purchase. So what does that mean for organizations dealing with a whole portfolio of projects?

Well, it seems they face a similar dilemma based on the lively conversations at PMO Symposium™. Much of that discussion centered on the 2015 PMI^® Thought Leadership Series: The Power of Project Portfolio Management, produced in partnership with Deloitte, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and The Economist Intelligence Unit.

“We need to keep things simple,” said Chris Garibaldi of Deloitte. “It’s not about implementing all the capabilities of project portfolio management. You can have too many tools, too many processes.”

Even in these metrics-obsessed, data-drenched times, Garibaldi said a handful of KPIs and just one dashboard view of the project portfolio’s health can provide enough clarity for portfolio managers and the C-suite they support.

Process and technology are critical components of portfolio management, but, he said, “people first—always.”

And those people must go in armed with the courage to kill a project out of whack with strategy.

“We have to create a culture that makes it okay to stop projects and reinvest those resources somewhere else,” said Jennifer Bratton of BCG, who spoke at the symposium’s opening plenary session.

With the business environment changing so fast, organizations can’t afford to waste money and time on the wrong projects.

“You’ve got to invest in individuals that will call out failures because it’s right for the business,” Bratton said.

Anthony Gaytor has been living that at HP Enterprise, as the global organization worked to get its arms around a sprawling portfolio of internal IT projects.

“If you don’t have the strategy at the core of everything you’re doing, you may not be working on the right things,” Gaytor said in his keynote address. Without effective portfolio management, “you’re dead before you start.”

And to keep things moving, you’re going to need exec support — so learn to speak fluently in the language of the C-suite.  “If you talk IT speak or project language, they’re never going to listen to you.”

The strategic approached is clearly working for HP’s internal IT portfolio, which the company has sliced from 1,240 to 500 projects in just a few years. On-time delivery has increased by 20 percent and the portion of innovation (rather than support) projects has jumped from 30 percent to 80 percent.

Gaytor attributed those results in part to KISS: the old adage, “keep it simple, stupid.” Every project is now judged on just six KPIs.

Portfolio management is about always keeping an eye out for ways to trim the fat — so all that’s left is “doing the right thing at the right time with the right outcomes,” he said.

Sounds so very simple — and sensible. So why do so few organizations do it?