Leading and Following in a Hierarchical Organization

I’m a fan of the show Criminal Minds. Very intense, very intriguing, slightly disturbing. Recently, due to a situation with a very personal case, Thomas Gibson’s character Hotchner, had to relinquish leadership of the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) to another character, Morgan. In preparation for this, Hotch started to give Morgan some paperwork-type tasks that Morgan felt was menial. Morgan thought he was being punished when, in fact – as he would later find out – he was just being prepped for his new role. Those paperwork items were things Hotch always had to do, but no one else knew about because he ‘just did them.’

Just Say NO to Busy Work

Leadership of any kind comes with costs. What all organizations must do is understand how much of that extra ‘paperwork’ is really necessary for those that they are asking to lead. Busy work should never – repeat NEVER – be required of a project manager, or any leader for that matter. In fact, many organizations ask that their successful project managers operate with little to no direction and give them quite a bit of autonomy in their jobs. If there’s a PMO in place, then a once per week meeting with all the PMs as a group to go through any company news and specific project-related issues should be sufficient.

Everyone Benefits from Standardized Reporting

The idea is that your PMO processes and your project management policies already in place will mean that you have a somewhat standardized status reporting process already. And those standard reports should be sufficient information for the PMO Director to see without requiring tedious other reporting information or mechanisms. I believe that a PMO Director should be always trying to clear paths to success for his or her project managers.

Never should they be requiring project managers to create extra reports in different formats to satisfy their own reporting needs. Figure out a standard report on project status that fits all needs and ask that PMs use that as a general template as they move forward in their projects…then just have the PMs cc the status report to the PMO Director every week as they deliver them to the team and the customer.

I’ve been a part of organizations and PMOs that seemed to want to load down employees with meaningless paperwork and reports. Micro-management has no place in organizations I work for…it drives me crazy. That’s probably why – self-admittedly – I’m sometimes not the best person to have as an employee. I’m an independent thinker and hate doing things that get in the way of doing what is right for the project…meaning what is best going to serve the project, my organization and my customer. Am I stubborn…yes. But I also feel that stubbornness and independent thinking are two very critical characteristics organizations should be looking for in their project managers.

Summary

With all this rambling, what exactly am I trying to say? Basically that project managers who are part of an organization – either in a formal PMO or distributed throughout the company – are always asked to lead and often asked to follow (such as with a PMO Director). We’re responsible for a lot – sometimes it seems like the world – as project managers as we try to satisfy the customer, our team, and our company leadership.

The key for the PM is to be a good leader and a wise and efficient follower. Do what is expected, but protect your team, your project and your customer. Therefore, if you’re seeing processes that do not make sense…question them. But when you do question them, also come with a proposed solution. Think proactively. Processes within organizations seem to cycle through significant changes every 2-3 years. Be a change agent for efficient processes within your company…everyone will benefit.

Project Management from a Distance – Part 3

In Part 2 of this six-part series, we covered the concept of will remote work or telecommuting work for you in your given situation. In this Part 3, we’ll discuss if it what type of job enables remote or telecommuting project management:

Part 1 – Why remote?

Part 2 – Will it work for you?

Part 3 – What type of job enables remote PM?

Part 4 – What setup do you need?

Part 5 – Negotiating when it’s not an obvious move

Part 6 – Staying the course

I touched a little bit on this in Part 2 in the section on both the customer and the project scenario, but will go into further detail here.

When Will It Work?

Obviously, there are a lot of jobs that cannot be effectively performed remotely. But I’ve always felt that in many cases – especially with large, long-term IT implementations – many PM jobs and projects can be performed in a telecommuting capacity.

After all, the primary communication points for the project manager are:

• Status reporting
• Project schedule delivery and discussion
• Project status calls
• Team communications and status calls
• PMO weekly calls

I don’t see anything on this list that, given the right circumstances, can’t be done remotely. I know there are going to be cases and certain organizational cultures where it just won’t be possible or ever allowed, but logically speaking, these should often be able to be performed remotely.

Remote IT

In fact, with the development of new technologies over the past 5-10 years, much IT work can be done in a telecommuting capacity. With the proper setup, most developers should be able to work remotely. Most other peripheral IT personnel should also be able to perform their primary functions remotely 80-90% of the time. It’s a given that most people and positions need face time with co-workers from time to time and for critical company or customer meetings, but the day-to-day work can usually be done independently and remotely.

On the flip side, jobs or projects that require a close-knit hands-on team will not work. Sometimes that’s a short-term project where the customer is demanding 24/7 access to the project team and it’s just best to take the team onsite and work hand-in-hand with the customer and successful run the implementation. Sometimes that’s a project where access to your company’s support team is critical and it just makes sense to work onsite and have immediate access to those team members that you’re going to need. It goes without saying that, if yours is a face they see often, then it’s hard for those support personnel to not give you priority over other requests for support that they are receiving.

Summary

When considering a remote option, it’s important to know if your job is one that would even make it possible. There’s no sense bringing it up to management or attempting to perform it remotely if it doesn’t make any sense. Usually, that’s not going to be the case, however. Assess it professionally, and if it makes sense…try it.

How to Make Your PMO More Visible

Visible? Did I say visible? What I think I really mean is viable. We all want our Project Management Office (PMO) to be visible, right? And, if the projects are flowing through it like they should be, then it probably is visible. The scary part is when some projects flow through it and others – possibly the big ticket, high dollar projects – aren’t.

Separate is Not Equal

It’s not wise to segregate like that. I worked at one very large aviation and engineering company in the late 90’s and early 2000’s leading all internal web development projects just prior to helping them build their PMO. There was an internal struggle to be the web project provider between our group, the Internet Team, and the other group, the Graphic Design Team. I truly was some strange internal political struggle. Our team eventually came out on top meaning all web development projects were channeled through us, but it was strange to see such an internal battle going on like that.

The same can be said for the PMO and the projects that are allowed to run through it. If you have a PMO in place, or are building one, then all projects should at least run THROUGH it – if not all are run BY it. All projects should be tracked by the PMO and status reporting should be run up through the PMO, even if the project ends up being managed elsewhere within the organization. If the high visibility projects aren’t even being channeled through the PMO for documentation and tracking, then you have a real problem brewing.

PMO Promotion

It is the responsibility of the PMO leadership to properly promote the PMO and help ensure its viability and visibility. Its viability is maintained by doing the following:

• Implementing proper and repeatable processes to consistently and successfully manage projects
• Implementing consistent templates for managing project and reporting status to customers and executive management
• Hiring competent, experienced Project Managers to lead projects for the organization
• Implementing proper compensation plans to retain good PM resources
• Implementing adequate training and on-boarding programs and processes to ensure that PMs are well-trained and up to speed on the PMO processes and practices

The PMO’s visibility is maintained by doing the following:

• Reporting project portfolio status on a regular basis and in a meaningful and useful format so that executive management realizes the PMO’s value
• Implementing solid PMO practices to ensure that the high-visibility customers are happy and referencable and the high-visibility projects are successful
• Inviting executive leadership to regularly attend weekly PMO meetings and sit in on project status meetings for the critical, high-visibility projects
• Managing project budgets thoroughly and reporting budget status up through executive leadership to show bottom-line PMO and Project Manager value

The PMO Director, as the leader of the PMO, must be a strong leader with pull inside the organization to ensure that these things happen. Otherwise, the PMO runs the danger of becoming obsolete or, at the very least, insignificant…and the mission critical projects will pass right by the PMO to special teams outside the PMO’s jurisdiction. Executive leadership must see value and ensuring that happens begins with the PMO leadership.

Summary

I’ve personally helped setup PMO’s and I’ve personally watched PMO’s fail. They’ve always failed for one of the following three reasons:

• Lack of strong, focused leadership
• Lack of repeatable process
• Lack of executive leadership support

The PMO must be formed and move forward with all three of these in place to ensure it’s success.

We Learn from What We Screw Up

The title basically says it all. We go to school, we go to training classes, we join associations, we read books. We do everything good little IT and business people should do to better ourselves in our profession. And, at the end of the day, we’ve learned some things that help us in our jobs.

But what do we really learn the most from? Growing up, did you learn more from what you were told to do or did you learn more from what you did wrong and had to pay the consequences for? I contend that the latter wins hands-down. It’s nice to learn things…it always is. But when we screw up really good and pay some sort of price for it…I contend that those are the times that we really really LEARN.

Example #1

Case in point…. I’ve mentioned many times how budgeting issues can torpedo projects and I’ve had at least one major project of mine go south due to budget handling issues. I’ve passed blame somewhat, but overall I’m the Project Manager and that’s my responsibility. That which does not kill us makes us stronger, right? I firmly believe that. And that which does not get us fired makes us a better employee, a better server of our customer, a better business professional.

One major project completely shutdown for budget issues that could have been avoided – or least the blow could have been softened – with the appropriate action. I learned from that mistake and budget information is key to weekly discussions and project status reports that I have with and share with the customer now. It’s formally documented – both current budget and forecasted budget – and discussed formally every week. I’ve taken away the question marks and made it a joint effort with the customer. And believe me, the customer always appreciates the knowledge and would rather know the bad things and work through them with you then to waste money and cancel an engagement. I’m certain of that.

Example #2

I also worked on a major $50 million program for the US Department of Education. It was much more of a program than a project – it had a five-year run followed by an RFP process and our proposal and another contract win. The company I worked for always won it because the program had grown to such a large size, it was so complex and had so many add-ons that no potential bidder could knock us – the incumbent – out of contention for the next proposal. We had become fat and overconfident.

Then one day a funny thing happened. We missed a major milestone deliverable. Then we missed another. Then we improperly tested a change order resulting in delays and re-work. Suddenly, the government was not so enamored with our performance and certainly had lost confidence in our ability to deliver. We desperately needed to learn from this mistake, act aggressively and right the ship before it was too late – because at this point the project was within one year of coming up for re-bid.

I had responsibility on this program for all financials and budgeting, all change management, all change orders, disaster recovery, and status reporting. Production was not in my scope, but I pulled my direct reports together and we resurrected the project schedule that I had put together 3 years prior in order to win the current contract and we updated it to what was happening today. What my team and I turned out was a project schedule encompassing nearly 4,000 tasks and a my peer managers on the program were ready, willing and equipped to manage their specific portions of this mammoth project schedule.

My responsibility was to bring that all together and take over leading the weekly status meetings with the government managing everything to that schedule and producing meaningful alert reports from it both for internal purposes and for the customer to hold us accountable to. What resulted was a project that quickly got back on track, a customer whose satisfaction was raised beyond the level it had been previously and another huge contract win down the road. It wasn’t my doing – my entire team and I took the initial action – but everyone pulled together and made it work. We learned from our overconfidence and mistakes before it was too late. And in this case too late could have meant losing our jobs in a year if the contract was lost.

Summary

We’re human…we’re told what to do from the time we’re born till the time we die from someone or another. It doesn’t matter if we’re John Doe or Donald Trump…someone somewhere is instructing us off and on. We learn from those instructions. But I believe we also learn very fast – maybe faster – when we screw up and suffer the consequences. Sometimes we have to fail to perform better.

Random News Stories

20 Scenes From Project & Portfolio Management Summit

Everything Channel’s Project & Portfolio Management Summit headed to Southern California last week where the hot topics of discussion included the use of PPM technology to help bring IT costs under control. Pictured here are the much-coveted awards. Following are a look at the show highlights and the winners of this year’s Project & Portfolio Management Summit Innovation Awards.

Slides and Images here…

Project Management Institute and FICCI Sign MoU to Advance the Discipline of Project Management in India

New Delhi, India – Project Management Institute (PMI), the world’s leading not-for-profit professional association for the project management profession and FICCI, India’s apex business organization, signed a Memorandum of Understanding to advance the discipline and practice of project management in India. The MoU aims to advocate, promote and institutionalize project management across government agencies, public sector enterprises and organizations.

Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to a broad range of activities -across sectors like infrastructure, engineering, IT, defense and aerospace, pharmaceuticals among others – in order to ensure that the projects are completed and delivered on time and within budget and to meet the objectives for which they were intended.

Project management becomes critical given the Indian government’s focus on fast tracking infrastructure projects and to meet the growth objectives outlined in the Eleventh Five Year Plan. The MoU covers developing special training modules for government and public sector units on project management. Further, the MoU will enable FICCI access to PMI’s globally developed project management standards, publications and case studies. The agreement also enables the two organizations to share information, conduct joint research and promote the discipline of project management through joint seminars, conferences and through other platforms.

Read the full story here..