Voices on Project Management

By Wanda Curlee

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) oversees the Internet’s system of domain names, which include .com, .edu, .gov and .mil, among others. More broadly, the not-for-profit organization aims to keep the Internet “secure, stable and interoperable,” while promoting competition.

Unfortunately, for several reasons ICANN is in the midst of organizational change. ICANN’s current president and CEO announced in May that he’ll be leaving the organization next March, and the search for a new CEO will start soon. More countries are voicing their desire for free or low-cost Internet access and more domain name categories, while pushing their agendas. The disruptive potential of the Internet of Things is making ICANN leadership think as well.

All this change is driving change within ICANN—and creating a wonderful opportunity for portfolio managers.

ICANN needs to focus on strategic goals, which need to tie back to its charter. A strong portfolio manager should be able to assist the new CEO in pursuing and achieving strategic alignment. The portfolio manager will focus country representatives and those that work within ICANN to ensure that projects and programs meet a strategic need.

The organization may require more than one portfolio manager. There may be one master portfolio with several sub-portfolios focusing on specific strategies or goals. Alternatively, there may be several portfolios reporting straight into the C-suite.

The new CEO and other executives will provide strategic direction, and the portfolio manager should have their ear. While executives resolve strategic issues and travel to give presentations, work with governments and testify before government agencies, the portfolio manager is focused on driving strategic initiatives to the finish line.

The portfolio manager is the person at the helm turning strategic goals into results while making course adjustments when necessary. This is accomplished with a healthy governance structure, an understanding of the industry and environmental factors, and constant communication with the C-suite sponsor and major stakeholders.

I’ve focused on ICANN here, but this scenario is largely true for many organizations operating in the dynamic IT and telecommunications industries. The CEO and other executives' suite collectively serve as the captain, while the portfolio manager provides guidance to maintain a healthy bottom line while still achieving the organization’s strategic objectives.

by Dave Wakeman

If you read this blog regularly, you may have noticed that I’ve been focusing on strategy a lot lately. The reason is simple: The alignment between projects and strategy tends to be a significant driver of organizational success.

For this post, I want to focus on a crucial figure when it comes to alignment: the sponsor. In working to align projects and strategy, the sponsor really is the key to whether or not your efforts will be successful.

For this reason, it’s essential that project managers candidly communicate with sponsors. You need to understand how the project fits into the organization and how you can position your project in a way that will deliver on your organization’s strategy.

Here are three tips for optimizing sponsor relations.

1. Keep Pushing for Answers: We’ve all dealt with projects and clients that give us some variation of the classic line from our parents: “Because I said so.” That may have worked for our parents, but it won’t work too well for our careers.

As a proactive leader in your organization, you need to work with your sponsor to understand how the project fits into the organization’s strategy. For some of you, that may seem difficult, but if you frame the questions around wanting to understand where you may be challenged for resources or time, you can usually get the conversation started.

Other questions that will help you discover how well your project aligns with the organization’s goals are:

• How high a priority is this currently?
• I’ve read the requirements and goals, but I’m still unclear. What should the ultimate outcome of this project be?

2. Communicate Consistently: One of the big challenges of aligning strategy and projects is that you’re busy, your sponsor is busy, and your team is busy. This is no excuse for not communicating consistently. In fact, a constant stream of demands is a reason you should be communicating consistently—that way you ensure that no one’s efforts are wasted on something that is no longer relevant.

To make sure you communicate consistently with your sponsor, use the following framework:

• First, set up appropriate reporting and meeting schedules with your team.
• Second, take the time to digest the information gleaned from your team.
• Third, adjust your actions and activities to reflect the new realities on the ground.
• Fourth, set up a consistent time to brief and update your sponsor. Keep that appointment religiously.
• Finally, get the sponsor’s commitment that important matters can and will be addressed quickly to keep the project on track.

3. Embrace Change: I’m sure that at one time or another we’ve all felt humiliated and downtrodden because our most dear project has been shut down for no discernable reason and we can’t get an explanation from anyone.

These situations are challenging. But you owe it to yourself, your team and your sponsor to embrace change. You also need to proactively address the change, positive or negative, with your sponsor. This will help you gain information that will allow you to make better decisions. But it will also encourage an open dialogue with your sponsor.

Also, proactively dealing with change can be extremely helpful in assisting your sponsor on new courses of action based upon the new information and the new realities that your projects face.

To accelerate your ability to embrace change, ask questions like:

• How will this change impact our organizational mission?
• Is this change happening because the project wasn’t in alignment?
• Does this change provide an opportunity for us to embrace a new set of circumstances or new business opportunities?

I’m curious to find out how you handle these kind of strategic communications with your sponsors. Let me know in a comment below! 

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By Marian Haus, PMP

What’s the most important asset of your project? Your budget? A great project management tool? Your expertise and skills? They’re all valuable, yet the most important asset is your project team!

Projects are done by people, so success depends heavily on them. Imagine you have budget constraints; if you have talented and motivated people, they’ll find a way to move ahead.

Imagine you have an ancient project management tool; if you have the most reliable people, you might skip tracking the standard deviation of your project tasks’ duration estimates.

Imagine you’re relatively new to project management; if you have great team members, they’ll move the project ahead and drag you along till you get up to speed.

Now imagine you have an unmotivated, disorganized or poorly skilled project team. Regardless of how good the other project assets are, your job as project manager will be difficult and it’s likely your project will fail.

Sometimes as project managers, we neglect our most priceless asset—the project team. We focus too much on a project’s deliverables, the timeline, or making the end customer or sponsor happy.

Don’t get distracted. By treating your project team like any other asset of the project, you will be acting as a project administrator. By focusing on the quality, happiness and development of your project team, you will be acting like a project leader.

Here are five key ingredients for being a successful project leader and getting the best from your project team:

1) Motivation: Motivate and inspire the team by listening, mentoring, coaching, guiding and putting emphasis on people’s values. Establish a common set of values or a team credo.

2) Focus: Being busy with detailed project activities, team members might not see the forest for the trees—they might forget why the project is being done in the first place. Explain the focus by describing the end goal (the “what”). Articulate the benefits (the “why”) of achieving the project outcome.

3) Empowerment: Make your team members feel responsible for their work and accountable for the project success. It’s not just your project; it’s theirs too. Instead of assigning or delegating tasks, foster proactiveness and independence.

4) Skills Development: The daily project work should offer your team the chance to gain experience and develop expertise. Skills development during a project is a byproduct that is often neglected.

5) Appreciation: Throughout the project, take the time to appreciate and celebrate achievements. This will motivate the team and boost optimism and self-confidence, which will ultimately drive increased performance.

The ability to mix these ingredients into your team mark the difference between being a project manager and a project leader. A project manager will focus on the activities to be done and will assign them to people. A project leader will focus on the team and empower and motivate its members to achieve the project goals.

Are you a project administrator or project leader? How do you get the best from your team?

By Lynda Bourne

Stakeholders are becoming increasingly vocal in their demands for “good governance.” The rise of stakeholder activism (shareholders are stakeholders, too) is affecting the way organizations of all types are governed and managed.

This will in turn impact the way projects are initiated and managed—which could affect your career.

But when thinking about what good governance looks like, be careful not to confuse it with good management. They aren’t the same! Governance is firstly focused on creating the environment in which good management can flourish, and then on ensuring the organization’s management is good.

Global organizations are finding their stakeholders and shareholders less and less tolerant of governance failures that lead to bad management. This lack of tolerance manifests itself through government investigations and criminal prosecutions against organizations of all types and sizes—from FIFA on down.

All this means the project failures that may have been acceptable in the past are unlikely to be tolerated in the future. Stakeholders increasingly expect organizations to proactively and effectively manage their investments in projects and programs.  

This entails both the “management of projects,” focused on the full value chain from the initial investment decision through benefits realization, and the traditional domains of project, program and portfolio management.

Achieving excellence across the value chain will not be easy. The goal does offer an opportunity for the project management profession to expand its influence beyond the narrow confines of project management into the broader arena of the “management of projects,” which will involve project management advocacy in both senior management circles and governance circles. (Organizations such as PMI are already actively involved in this work .)

Know Your Functions

An understanding of the difference between management and governance is critical for such advocacy to be effective.

The primary focus of the governing body in any organization should be balancing the competing interests of its diverse stakeholder community. The six functions of governance are:

·         G1 - Determining the objectives of the organization

·         G2 - Determining the ethics of the organization

·         G3 - Creating the culture of the organization

·         G4 - Designing and implementing the governance framework for the organization

·         G5 - Ensuring accountability by management

·         G6 - Ensuring compliance by the organization

The functions of management focus on achieving the organization’s objectives within the framework established by the governing body. As defined by Henri Fayol in his 1916 book “Administration Industrielle et Generale,” the five functions of management are:

·         M1 - To forecast and plan

·         M2 - To organise

·         M3 - To command or direct (lead)

·         M4 - To coordinate

·         M5 - To control (in the sense that a manager must receive feedback about a process in order to make necessary adjustments)

This diagram plots the relationship between the governance and management functions. Management functions are assumed to be hierarchal with the governance inputs cascading down to lower-level functions.

The challenge for many organizations is establishing an effective governance framework to frame and oversee the work of its management,  thereby avoiding the scandals we read about all too frequently.

The question that interests me is: How can we start to influence the top end of our organizations to allow the efficient delivery of the right projects and programs, managed the right way?

If the project management profession doesn’t step up to this challenge, someone else will. How do you think you can start to build influence?

This piece continues my previous blog post, “The Techniques That Don't Resolve Conflict,” which looked at why no technique other than collaborate/problem solve truly resolves a conflict. Withdraw/avoid, smooth/accommodate, compromise/reconcile and force/direct are all temporary solutions—they postpone conflict resolution for a later date. Problem solving (through confronting and collaborating) is the only way to settle the conflict for good.

Here are a few points to help resolve conflicts to achieve a win-win.

Separate the Person From the Problem

Normally, people are not right or wrong. They just have different opinions, or want a different outcome than us. There is a fair possibility for an opportunity in this difference. As soon as we start seeing the difference from an angle of opportunity, we reduce our negative emotions, reduce negativity toward the person, start taking an interest in his or her viewpoint and put more focus on the problem.

Respect the Opposite Party

See the rival as a potential ally and friend in this opportunity. Respect him and his views. Genuinely try to help the other party achieve their goal. Persist with this approach even if it is not reciprocated.

Keep the Dialogue Going

It usually takes some time to work through conflicts. Matters do not get resolved quickly or within the time frame we expect. We have to maintain patience and resist the urge to fast-track the decision. Actively explore for a suitable time, engage in a two-way conversation, listen to the other party and express our views. Focus more on the points where we share common ground.

Find the Root Cause

Finding the root cause of the conflict is key to attacking the problem, and not the person. Often the reasons that appear on the surface are different than the real problems at root.

Quite often people cannot express what they really want. We often call this a hidden agenda. Many times, this hidden agenda is not as bad as it appears. For instance, some people do not openly say that they are looking for a promotion, but that’s what they really want. We have to figure out the real need by establishing a two-way conversation.

We also have to look into whether the outcome the other party seeks is a need or interest. Interests are more aspirational, and we can put them on the table. Needs, on the other hand, are basic and therefore nonnegotiable.

Allow Others to Save Face

If the other party comes out clearly on the wrong side or starts losing face, it is not the time to slap. Instead, offer opportunities to save face. Allow the other person a safe way to exit with respect. 

Use the Law of Reciprocity

Reciprocity is the foundation of living together. What we give is what we get. Empathizing and showing acceptance creates an environment of acceptance. If we make a concession, quite possibly the other party also responds. When we realize that the other party has made a concession, we should reciprocate it.

Create an Emotional Link

Emotions are at the core of conflict resolution. Create an emotional link with the other party. We must foster positive emotions such as trust, empathy and acceptance by showing these emotions. Also, we should reduce negative emotions such as anger, fear and frustration. We must balance logic and emotions.

We can find conflicts almost everywhere. The good news is that they can bring more inclusiveness and cohesion in the project team if settled by confronting and not by withdrawing or forcing.

Confronting means: Let’s talk, let me understand you first, let’s find out the root cause, respect others and create an emotional connection. I believe any type of conflict can be resolved by confronting, bringing a win to both the parties.

What’s your experience? Please share your views.