An Influential Project Manager

An Influential Project Manager knows a great deal about their stakeholders, and makes and effort to keep learning more.

Political agendas represent the overall personal strategy that a stakeholder adopts to further their goals. It is formulated and influenced by many things, including their career history, and their career ambitions.

To explore more about their agenda, learn about where they have worked, what companies, countries, functions, professions and on what projects. Think about who they have worked with in the past, who hired them and where they are planning to go next.

You may not find this easy to find out, but keep these questions in mind as you turn on your political radar.

• Think of a key stakeholder. Write down their career history.
• How is their history influencing their current work?
• What can you guess about where they want to go next?
• How can you fill in the gaps in your insight?

The accumulation of these political insights will help you to learn how to adapt your pitches, your reports and your engagement so that it more easily aligns with what they are trying to do. That’s when influence become easy.

Several years ago, I was coaching a senior manager on a workshop. He explained that the project he had just been asked to deliver had been attempted before. In the previous two years, other managers had tried and failed to deliver it. Now it was his turn.

After working through the political problems, the scenarios and the reality of what was happening, he realised that the senior sponsors were not committed to it. In fact, they were simply making the right noises and seemed to have no real interest in it delivering.

He decided to kill his project.

Rather than try to influence the senior players to back him and give him the resources he needed, he considered how to influence them to close it down. Brave and courageous move.

By adopting this radical approach, he turned the tables and delivered the project. It seemed that by calling their bluff, he altered the balance of power and had them working hard to influence him to keep at it.

Recommending the closure of your project is always an option, consider it carefully.

Warning: Before you do this, make sure you’ve thought it through in detail, consulted widely and have a plan in place to manage stakeholder expectations.

An Influential Project Manager appreciates the political perspective of their work. Failure to do so is a major cause of failure for many project managers.

There are many ways to consider a project. The traditional one looks at a project as a collection of activities that aim to accomplish a given objective. The political perspective considers it in terms of the way it will impact the power structures of the host organisation. The perspective you adopt is your choice. While the facts of the case may remain unchanged, what you notice will alter dramatically.

• Consider your project as if it was initiated to give more power to someone else. Who would that be?
• How is your project reducing the power of different stakeholders?
• What political objectives is your project seeking to deliver, and for who?
• If your objective is not wholly explained at a rational level, could it be at a political level?
• How powerful are the supporters of your project? Why are they supporting it?
• Do the challenges you face have a political backdrop?
• Having considered your project from a political perspective, what action are you going to take?

Considering your project from a political perspective is a choice, and a choice you can make now, at least for a short time while you think through a specific problem you are facing.

In 2016, I had the honour of presenting five webinars here at the Project Management Institute. Judging by the comments and ratings, they've gone down well.

All of them had a purpose, and combine to provide a short course in influence,, and this is freely available in the OnDemand catalogue (see below). 

Having engaged with so many project managers during the year, I've learned a great deal. I've been delighted with the energy, enthusiasm and professionalism of the people here. So, I've decided to share more with you here during 2017 via this blog.

On a regular basis, hopefully once a week, I'll post a provocative, thought-provoking or practical article (200-300 words or so) to help you on your journey to greater influence. Because they will be brief, feel free to ask follow-up questions in the comments, or reach out to me directly.

I hope you find them useful enough to share with your colleagues and friends.

Here's the short course on influence in the PMI OnDemand catalogue:

• Strategic Influencing for Project Managers
• Diagnosing Power Dynamics Around Your Project
• Engaging Stakeholders with Style
• Building Your Reputation
• How to Handle Project Politics

My sincere wish is that you put these to good use doing great work while building a successful career in project management!

Colin