Voices on Project Management

By Christian Bisson, PMP

My last post about change stuck with me, so I want to revisit the topic by focusing on organizational cultural change here. Culture change means implementing new habits, new ways of thinking, new ways of working and so much more.

It presents a major challenge.

Why? Well, it’s more than processes, tools or documents—creating an organizational culture means changing people. This is as challenging as it gets.

When you’re looking to implement a culture change, here are few items to consider:

1. It takes time.

Most people will expect cultural changes to take a max of a few weeks, which is generally unrealistic. To level set expectations, share a roadmap of your changes.

The map should include high-level milestones of what the change will entail — training, meetings, etc. Then specify the objectives so people are on the same page as to why this is being implemented.

The roadmap will ultimately show that the changes are under control. It should mitigate any concerns or problems people will imagine.

2. You’ll need support.

A culture cannot be changed by just one person. There needs to be buy-in and it must be obvious.

I once had to implement daily Scrums with about 15 people, all of whom were accustomed to daily Scrums being long, painful meetings.

Changing that perception to one where meetings would last less than 10 minutes, where people would be on time, stand up and commit to the work they would aim to accomplish, was a challenge. I started by seeking out the colleagues in the group who were already on board with the change.

These early adopters helped me push others to stand up, be on time and ultimately helped keep things rolling when people went on tangents or brought up items out of turn. They were the first to jump in and “commit” to tasks rather than just saying whatever to get the meeting over with. It created a snowball effect, and we soon had efficient 10-minute meetings in place.

It’s a small example of a culture change, but it shows that having buy-in made all the difference.

3.  Seek feedback.

All team members react different during a culture change. Some will let frustration accumulate and burst when it’s too much, others might complain as time goes, others will be constructive, others will never share, etc.

You want to take control over that by welcoming feedback, as often as you can, from as many people you can. Obviously, don’t talk to everyone everyday. Use your judgment — for example, you might want to talk to those colleagues impacted the most every week, while speaking to others only monthly.

While more time-consuming, gathering feedback from people is better done one on one. It gives you a chance to connect with the individual. If you speak in large groups, the majority of people will remain quiet while others take over.

How have you tried to implement changes to your organizational culture? Share your stories and your tips!

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.)

Sue Gardner says winning companies of the future will put tech at the center of their organizations.

By Cyndee Miller

Nap pods, free laundry service, foosball tables, an endless supply of snacks. Ah, the perks of working at a Silicon Valley startup. Of course, there are also expectations of brilliance—and a willingness to log long hours.

And now the Silicon Valley way of working is infiltrating mainstream management.

More companies are realizing they need to create an atmosphere of ease, comfort and pleasure if they want their people—and projects—to reach their full potential, Sue Gardner told congress attendees at her keynote on Monday.

“The new workplace believes abundance drives innovation,” said Ms. Gardner, former executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation.

That means becoming a lot less Office Space and a lot more Silicon Valley—focusing more on creativity and less on cost-efficiency.

“Organizations need to be more willing to take risks and break things,” Ms. Gardner said.

I know, I know. Breaking things sounds messy. But face it, maintaining the status quo is never going to give companies an edge. In today’s tech-drenched, rapid-fire environment, companies quickly move from challenger to incumbent to decline.

“For the past 15 years, this cycle has been aggressively speeding up, with more disruption being more quickly driven by technology changes,” she said. “Tasks that used to be done by people are now being done by technology.

As technology takes center stage, so must the technical team. Smart companies will prioritize people with tech skills—giving them the chance to be innovators rather than order takers.  

“Technology is now core to everything we do—and organizations that don’t retain tech talent will be vulnerable in the marketplace,” she said.

Project managers are in a prime spot to help drive the change, Ms. Gardner said. They can be the “connective tissue” between tech staff and management types, helping different groups understand each other. But it requires a degree of flexibility.

“Adapt to other people. Don’t expect them to adapt to you,” she said.

That doesn’t mean project managers should be pushovers. On the contrary, Ms. Gardner thinks they have the power to address an organization’s most intrinsic issues.

“You have access to information, so you will know where the bodies are buried,” she said. “When there’s an elephant in the room, project managers are the ones who need to acknowledge and resolve it.”

And if Ms. Gardner is right, you’ll have a nice nap pod to retreat to after all that hard work.

But is that enough? As much as I’d love my own personal concierge service a la Google, you have to wonder if the Silicon Valley startup style will really work for everyone.

F-15 pilot-turned-leadership-guru Joel “Thor” Neeb talks focus, feedback and failure.

By Cyndee Miller

As with most things in life, apparently being a fighter pilot isn’t much like what you see in the movies. There’s not a lot of witty Top Gun banter from the cockpit. No Kenny Loggins soundtrack. If you’re smart, you’re concentrating solely on the enemy trying to blow you out of the sky—not staring at the control panels.

“You’re spending 90 percent of the time focused on what’s going on outside the cockpit,” said Joel “Thor” Neeb. (It turns out Top Gun-style nicknames are a real thing. And I want one.)

“It’s the mission objective you’re looking at,” he said in the opening keynote at congress.

And so it goes with project managers, who must stay fixated on the assignment at hand—or risk crashing their projects into the ground.

“If you lost sight, you lose the fight,” said Mr. Neeb, a former F-15 pilot-turned-president at corporate training company Afterburner.

But it’s easy to get distracted when you and your team don’t have enough time, tools or resources to accomplish the mission. That can translate to task saturation, what Mr. Neeb called “the silent killer to performance.”

The most common response is channelizing—focusing on the one thing you deem most important—to the detriment of everything else going on around you.

Clearly, that’s not a great idea.

Instead, Mr. Neeb advocates zeroing in on your “critical instruments,” aka, the factors that will influence project success. “These change all the time,” he says. “It’s up to you to figure out what they are and to teach your team what they are.”

Mr. Neeb promotes flawless execution, but he acknowledges that no project will be perfect. He says project management top guns must push their teams toward perfection while still allowing them to “pivot, fail and iterate.”

“Tell teams they’re empowered to fail and fail quickly,” says Mr. Neeb. “Make that mistake but never make it again.”

The best way to identify and avoid these mistakes is through a debriefing with “no names and no ranks.”

“The key to a debrief is the tone. We’re not pointing fingers,” says Mr. Neeb. “It’s not who’s right, it’s what’s right.”

Too often, companies skip this step, but they’re missing out. According to Mr. Neeb, structured debriefings can increase the chance of success on future projects by 38 percent.

With “Danger Zone” as my official earworm du jour, Cyndee “Scoop” Miller is signing off now, but stay tuned for more from congress….

Steve Dierker accepts the PMI Project of the Year award on 24 September.

By Cyndee Miller

When people talk innovation, they typically throw around a lot of fancy management terms: paradigm shift, game-changer, disruptive.

What’s often left out is the blood, sweat and tears part.

So it was positively refreshing to hear Steve Dierker credit the hard work and sacrifices of the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS‐II) team as he accepted this year’s PMI Project of the Year award. “It was a long journey with many challenges along the way.”

I’m not even going to pretend I truly grasp the science behind this project. Let’s just say, this was a tough one. The team at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, USA, was charged with creating a powerful photon microscope that would help scientists conduct research at the atomic level. The final design incorporated 900 custom-built giant magnets that created a concentrated beam of electrons thinner than a human hair—moving at 99 percent of the speed of light.

Completing that kind of paradigm-shifting, game-changing, mind-blowingly disruptive project took some serious project management.

“A disciplined approach to project management was part of the vision we shared with [project sponsor], the U.S. Department of Energy,” Mr. Dierker said at PMI’s Professional Awards Gala in San Diego, California, USA.

The payoff for all that hard work and discipline? The team closed the US$912 million project ahead of schedule and under budget—and delivered an additional US$68 million in scope enhancements not included in the baseline. (Get a look inside the project with this video and the cover story of PM Network^® in October.)

Still, winning this award was no cakewalk. The Brookhaven team had some worthy competitors—with their own disruptive projects:

Guaíba 2 Pulp Mill Project, Guaíba, Brazil: A US$2.4 billion project nearly quadrupled the production capacity of the Celulose Riograndense pulp mill—while leading the way on social and environmental responsibility.

To make the factory energy self-sufficient, the company designed a system that would generate all required electricity through its own production processes. Celulose Riograndense also spent US$50 million on local roads and infrastructure, created more than 9,429 jobs and offered more than 230,000 hours of training courses that allowed locals to develop specialized skills. Check out the video to learn more about the project.

Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital, Brisbane, Australia:

When public enquiries found the local pediatric healthcare system was putting children with complicated medical problems at risk, the government of Queensland, Australia took action. To reduce mortality rates—and make it easier for patients to meet with the state’s limited number of specialists—Queensland Health launched a project to consolidate and centralize pediatric services.

Putting the focus squarely on sick kids, the Aurecon project team created a collaborating project environment and followed a formal benefits management process. Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital now provides an integrated facility that puts families at the center of its operations, while also reducing redundancy across the healthcare system. Check out the project video to learn more.

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