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Culture Shocked Into Action
| During my project management career, I have experienced many culture shocks. But the one that changed my life happened when I joined a global corporation in Mexico in the mid-1980s. I was a recent graduate and had just finished my internship with this organization when I got a job offer. During immersion training, all the new hires visited the boardroom, lined with awards and honors that the Mexican branch had won in the past. Most impressive was the mahogany table, where many major deals went down. It was cared for like a museum piece. After several months, I adjusted to the corporate world with the help of a great manager and mentor. Soon enough, prep work started for the quarterly review meeting, when executives visited our office from the company's U.S. headquarters. To my surprise, my manager included me in the prep team, which meant I would be a presenter. When the big day came, I arrived at the boardroom a few minutes beforehand to ensure everything was in order for my first presentation to senior executives. There, I found one of the visiting top executives -- with both feet up on the mahogany table. When the meeting began, we commenced introductions. The visiting executives threw their business cards across the table as a casino croupier would, while my Mexican colleagues and I handed our business cards to them. The meeting progressed, and when the time came for one of the visiting executives to present, he tossed a copy of a handout not only to me, but also to the general manager of the Mexican branch. I was in total shock. I wondered, how could this be happening? They were high-level executives, and their lack of good manners -- by my standards -- took me by surprise. I also felt frustrated. This was not interaction I had hoped for with headquarter executives. It took me some time to digest the experience. But by the next quarterly review, I was ready to take action. I tossed my business card at each of the U.S. executives during the introductions. Before my presentation, I slid handouts across the table at them but handed them to my Mexican colleagues. My actions raised a few eyebrows among the latter. By the end of the meeting, the executive I saw with his feet up on the table months prior asked me to stay in the room. I expected to be reprimanded, or even fired. But he said: "Thanks, Conrado. Your actions during the meeting made me realize that business behaviors need to be adjusted according to location. What may be okay in my country may not be okay in yours. You taught me a great lesson. Employees like you make this a great company." That was the "wow" moment that had an impact on the rest of my professional life. I'm not recommending such drastic actions, but I felt strongly enough about my experience to take the risk. The moral of my story: Culture shock does not have to be a negative or incapacitating. I used my experience as a source of motivation, introspection and change. It led me to a lifetime of researching organizational and national cultures and sharing my experiences of working with multicultural and multigenerational teams. As a project manager, how have you recovered from culture shock and turned it an opportunity for professional growth? Share your thoughts below along with your Twitter handle, and Voices on Project Management will publish the best response as a blog post. |
Essentials of Successful Project Schedule Planning: Part II
Categories:
Project Planning
Categories: Project Planning
| In my previous post on project schedule planning, I referred to a five-step approach to setting up a schedule planning framework. In this post, I offer seven tips on creating a schedule for any project:
What other tips help you when building a project schedule that can apply to any project? |
Making Earned Value More Valuable
Categories:
Calculating Project Value
Categories: Calculating Project Value
| The most powerful — and most commonly misunderstood — measurement of project progress is earned value metrics, the way of measuring actual versus planned progress. "Earned value" is so attractive because the term conjures positive visions, emotions and expectations on what earned value metrics will do. But in reality, if a project manager does not measure and then present the metrics properly to project sponsors, the numbers can produce unpleasant mood swings, premature celebrations and raging arguments. I have found that project managers who successfully track project progress with earned value metric share a common practice: They allocate the same effort to the meaningful presentation of earned value and its implementation. Consider these basic tips for making earned value actually mean something: 1. Qualify activities that earn value. One of the quickest roads to failure is to include all project activities in determining earned value. This can set up the false indication of true progress by incorporating administrative tasks like the kick-off meetings, project status meetings and other activities that are not central to actual progress. To avoid misleadingly optimistic earned value, include only core items when determining earned value — for example, high- effort and -risk activities, and external dependency milestones. 2. Set standard earned value ranges. Another common trap in calculating earned value is allowing optimistic or downright untrue declarations of progress. You've all probably heard, "We are 99 percent complete, and all we have left to do is..." time and time again. To avoid this trap, set up conservative ranges of progress completion. For example, you may set a conservative percentage-complete tier of 75 percent if a deliverable is completed, and designate the remaining 25 percent to the approval process by the project sponsor. 3. Clearly communicate earned value to project sponsors. Speaking of project sponsors, one of my all-time favorite earned value moments occurred recently during the first progress status meeting. After several weeks of high expectations around earned value, the project manager stood up and said, "Our SPI is .92." Needless to say, this abbreviated report of the schedule performance index caused a long silence, puzzled looks and furrowed brows among project sponsors. Avoid such tense moments by communicating to project sponsors, in terms they understand, what earned value can and cannot do. Add relevance and context by combining earned value with other project readout content, and tailor your communications to sponsors through visualization techniques. For example, present a graph showing the schedule of planned value against the actual earned value of these deliverables for the project. Earned value can be one of the most powerful and revealing indications of true project progress — as long as it is properly determined and presented. How do you measure earned value? What are your tips in presenting earned value to project sponsors? |
Build Sponsorship, Boost the Portfolio
Categories:
Portfolio Management
Categories: Portfolio Management
| We've all been there. Portfolio managers have done their job of setting long-term objectives and a clear strategy. Projects have been selected and prioritized. And yet the organization is still having trouble gleaning real benefits — i.e., results that create business value and contribute to its strategic objectives — from projects and, subsequently, its portfolio. This disconnect is often rooted in weak sponsorship, and that's often a result of project sponsors not knowing their roles. When that happens, they aren't able to support projects in a way that aligns a portfolio to the organization's grand strategic plan. Project sponsors are instrumental in a project's selection and categorization, allocating resources, and monitoring and communicating its progress to the highest rungs of an organization. As a high-level decision-maker, an effective project sponsor gives the portfolio more agility and flexibility to adapt and absorb changes. While fostering the right kind of project sponsor won't happen overnight, it can start right away. To do so, executive-level management — many of which could be sponsors — should:
Project managers can also help sponsors support projects better by communicating in the same language. Project managers should translate technical issues (such as scope and deliverables) into tangible business results (i.e., return on investment, profit, revenue and costs) for sponsors. In this manner, sponsors and project managers together can handle the internal environment (project team and processes) and the external environment (organizational structure, strategy and market demands). Do you have strong project sponsorship in your organization? In your experience, can effective sponsorship boost the entire portfolio's performance? |
When Passion Drives the Program
Categories:
Program Management
Categories: Program Management
| Mayday is a Taiwanese rock band with a massive worldwide following. In fact, two concerts promoting their 2012 album, Noah's Ark, were held in the world's largest sports venue, Beijing's National Stadium. Those two performances alone drew 200,000 fans — an astonishing feat for any band, anywhere in the world. Believe Music manages Mayday — and staged the larger-than-life concerts in Beijing last year. For the music management company, performance — and particularly, passion for performance — is the key to industry success. In fact, the company's success comes from harnessing and managing passion for live music as a program. The focus on passion as a business driver starts at the top. CEO Yung-Chi Chen believes in the power of live music, and that success comes if you just do what you're good at, and do it properly. Artists and bands that write and perform with passion will naturally attract a dedicated audience large enough to help sustain them in a career. Believe Music's head manager, Yiu-Yang Chou, has the interesting title of "Creator of Satisfaction." This reflects the company's emphasis on live performance — as long as audiences demand performances, try to satisfy them. Mr. Chou manages over 100 concerts every year. His managerial level is that of a program manager, rather than a project manager. So when asked how he balances project constraints like scope, time and cost with quality, he says: "You can tell from the sofa bed in the meeting room that our management concepts on time and cost are very weak! But the most important requirement to work in this job [and industry] is enthusiasm. With enthusiasm, you dedicate yourself to creating something that'll make an impact. Time and money will be spent, but something great will be produced." Across the board at Believe Music, passionate employees define cost control as "surviving" and risk management as "we've still got next time." And although that approach might seem like unsound business sense, the company's faith in passion for performance counts on a major stakeholder — the audience. Believe Music considers audiences not just passive viewers, but also as appreciative co-producers of the live event. Their enjoyment is a key measurement of the performance's success. It is what Believe Music, and their artists, define as a successful result with each concert (i.e., project). Such word-of-mouth and long-term audience growth cannot be bought overnight, and that is why passion — and satisfaction — is so important in Believe Music's business. Believe Music team members attribute enthusiasm over any business model for their success. When their specialized experience and passion is combined with a mature concert management system, the power of live performance becomes a money-making enterprise. How do you apply non-traditional business drivers — such as passion — in your programs and industry? Share your experiences below, and Voices on Project Management will publish the best response as a blog post. Learn more about the art of project management in the entertainment sector in "Let Us Entertain You," the cover story of the May 2013 issue of PM Network®. |