2

Preparing the Leadership

IN CHAPTER 1, we looked at the reason managing leadership is so difficult. We also noted the disconnect regarding leadership involvement between executives and the project managers who report to them. So the project manager must address the question, “Why is executive leadership so important to the success of a project?” The simple answer is that people respond to the agenda that their “boss” feels is important. And how do they determine what is important to the boss? They read the signals—they notice what the boss talks about and pays attention to over time. If you consider your own situation, you probably recognize this tendency in your own experience.

How Involved Should the Leadership Be?

Although the leadership will seldom have the time or interest to be “in on the details” concerning particular activities and tasks, it will be important for the project manager to communicate specific roles and responsibilities for them. The project manager must work with the sponsor to communicate to the leadership team that, at certain times during the project, he will call upon them to participate actively and deliver messages or intervene when difficulties occur. For example, if you need a leader to give an important message to the organization about expecting commitment from people for the project, she should be willing to do that.

Therefore, the project manager must develop a detailed communications plan that highlights to the sponsor and others in leadership when they will be called on to send certain messages or participate in certain activities and that they are key to the success of the project. In my experience, leaders are often more than willing to communicate to the organization if they understand how they can contribute and why it is important for the message to come from them personally.

If you are a strong communicator, this will usually mean that you (or, if you are not a strong communicator, someone from the project team) will be required to craft the message or at least provide a draft that the executive can deliver.

MANAGING RISK

In most cases, a company leader will want to review and edit the message so that it sounds more like the way she would deliver it. There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as the basic idea stays intact. If the leader (or corporate communications) begins to edit the communication in such a way that it loses the core meaning, you may need to do a better job of explaining what you are trying to accomplish and educate her on the risks and possible consequences involved in straying from the way you’ve developed the content.

If there is a communication specialist in the project team to develop the messages, you may need to get this person involved in the conversation. A specialist may have a better chance of explaining the intent of the wording and approach as drafted, especially if he drafted it.

Also, many project managers deal with multiple layers of management during the course of planning and executing their projects. Mid-level managers are notoriously difficult to deal with, but we need them. Why must the project manager work with them? The reason is fairly classic: They are the people who supervise most of the work done in the company. Remember the discussion in the previous chapter about operations and strategic perspective? These managers focus only on the operational side, and your project has a different agenda. If they do not understand or see visible evidence of commitment from the senior managers, they may feel that their compliance is optional, not mandatory. Navigating these political waters will require the help of senior executives at times. Occasionally, some of these midlevel managers may even challenge the project, probably as much to test the commitment of the executive team as to question some of the business decisions being made. It is beyond the capability of most project managers to address a challenge from this group.

Choosing a Project Champion

The idea of having an executive sponsor has been around for a long time. There are not going to be a lot of details on that role here because it has been covered very well in other books, as well as in the Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK). However, as most of us who have managed projects for any length of time recognize, it is often very difficult to keep sponsors engaged throughout a long project so that they are ready to help you at key junctures in the project. That is why I believe it is important to turn to the additional role of project champion. In my experience, the best candidate for champion has some critical characteristics that will help you make a project successful:

First and foremost, they are trusted explicitly by the sponsor and are able to provide that executive with clear and unambiguous information about the project. Such knowledge can be good news or bad news but can also be requests for help. Most of the time, champions report to the sponsor and, as a result, often have easier access to her than the project manager.

Secondly, they have broad understanding of the various segments of the business that are impacted by the project. Our most successful champions are usually people at the director level who have handled operational assignments in various parts of the organization.

They act as the chair of the Working Committee (which I will describe in detail later) and lead that group since they will often be successful in steering through political waters.

They work with the sponsor on cross-functional issues. Each of the departments represented in the project may have different executives and managers, and someone will have to help you navigate the issues and come to a resolution.

As you can see, the sponsor and champion can help you in many ways.

Dangerous Assumptions Made by Operations

Another role that you will need your sponsor and champion to assume is educating the operations group about their role in the project.

Operations makes three assumptions that must be corrected:

1.Operations assumes that the project owns the preparation for implementation. In fact, the operations team must take ownership of the implementation.

2.Operations will underestimate the complexity and difficulty of getting ready for the project deliverables. Most of my projects have been new systems or applications, and operations usually thinks that they are simply plug-and-play like the latest video game. It is just not true.

3.Operations does not appreciate the amount of time required to create alignment within the work processes.

All of these assumptions will require the help of the sponsor and/or champion to address. One of those ways may be in communications. Indeed, as project manager, I may typically draft the initial communications, such as e-mails, announcements, and presentations, that the sponsor and champion make to the organization. However, it is crucially important that these critical communications come from them and not from me as the project manager. When we look at the stakeholder analysis in Chapter 6, one of the key questions will be who should deliver the message? In most cases of communication outside the project team, the communication should be delivered by either the sponsor or the champion—but more about that later.

After securing the champion, I try to work with him to find the right people to fill a Working Committee team.

Developing a Working Committee and Working Groups

I believe the successful project manager will treat members of the Working Committee as a critical extension of her project team. There are several considerations in pulling together a working committee and the various working groups. As stated earlier, the task is to identify and nominate the best key people the company has to offer.

Unfortunately, these same people are often asked to take on these types of roles because they are outstanding and respected. I have often had to explain to my sponsor that a key indication of stakeholder leadership support is their willingness to provide these people for work on the project. There is a real risk in this strategy. In pursuing it, I have to make sure I am not being lured into taking people because they are “available.” As you will soon discover, if you haven’t already, there is usually a reason no one wants them working on their projects.

The greatest difference between a Working Committee and a working group is that the Working Committee should remain intact throughout the project, whereas a working group is given a specific issue or problem to solve and then is disbanded.

It is very important to draw on the various departments or groups that will be impacted by the changes the project will force on them when it is finished. The basic mandate for the Working Committee is to consider various options that have been presented from the project team and to make decisions about which options should be implemented.

Risk Management

In a project that I led to implement a customer relationship management (CRM) system, I had a project that affected nearly every department in the company, which sold hospital equipment and supplies. To provide some background, a CRM system is a technology that allows companies to manage and analyze the customer relationship with the goal of improving customer service and producing more revenue. Therefore, my project needed key players from sales, marketing, information technology, accounting, manufacturing, and procurement. In effect, each of these people represented a “constituency” within the company, and they needed to be chosen with that role in mind. As the project team explored ways to implement the CRM solution, I asked the Working Committee members to remember that they were to involve these key constituents routinely in the discussions about changes affecting the business.

Figure 2.1: Process for Business Process Change

Communications and the Working Committee

One of the key questions some of the members of the Working Committee had was, “Why does this group have a role in communications during a project?” And that was a good question. Here was the answer. They were the vehicle—the eyes, ears, and voice—for keeping people informed about what the project was doing and for providing the project team with feedback on concerns in operations about what we are doing. The working committee members were going to be asked to follow a process for decision making that involved their constituency.

During the project, I asked for and received agreement from the Working Committee members that before any key decision was made related to changes the project might make, the Working Committee would conduct discussions with their constituency and poll them on their thoughts and concerns (see Figure 2.1).

The information the committee members received was to be brought back to the project team for discussion before a decision was made. Any concerns could then be addressed, and the team could base their decision on the best way to get the job done for the business, not on the best technical solution. My goal was to keep the project aligned with the business and commercial side. And if the business climate or landscape changed during the course of the project, the Working Committee would know and would be able to provide the project team with a fair warning.

Be aware that some Working Committee members will not hold discussions with or inform their constituents and will attempt to make the decisions on their own. That really defeats the purpose of a Working Committee. To prevent this, I often develop independent relationships with other people within the various constituencies. I regularly seek them out to test what they are hearing from their Working Committee member and how knowledgeable they are about the project. That has worked well for me, and I have been able to specifically address my concerns with any Working Committee members who were not communicating well, citing specific examples.

The beauty of this arrangement is that the Working Committee spreads the news about what is going on in the project. And after decisions are made, the Working Committee members are in a position to defend their decisions later if their constituency objects to any of them. Ultimately, the most effective communication vehicle for serious messages come from people within the Working Committee when the groups impacted by the project both trust the committee and believe that it is looking out for their interests.

Working Groups

Working groups are often a subset of the Working Committee, but they usually include other members with specific knowledge or expertise. See Figure 2.2. Working groups will typically handle two types of issues, that is, when the problem:

Figure 2.2: Working Committee and Working Groups

Affects only a small group

Uncovers a bad business practice that is beyond the scope of the project

Let’s take a look at each of these situations to illustrate them.

One example of issue 1 was when the project team ran into a conflict between the sales department and the accounting and invoicing departments. The issue was the relative importance of entering accurate information into the CRM. The position the sales department took was that they wanted to spend their time driving sales and identifying potential sales opportunities. They did not want to enter data into a computer. They saw such tasks as relatively unimportant, even as they recognized that accurate information could help them identify additional opportunities. On the other side of the equation was the accounting and invoicing group, who had to have accurate data and information to complete the company’s financial reporting, not to mention to receive timely payment from customers. They complained that, under the “old” way, they spent entirely too much time correcting input errors and conducting reconciliations.

In a situation like this one, the unaffected members of the Working Committee did not really need to be in on all the detailed aspects of this discussion, so Rod, the project manager, created a working group that included the representatives from sales and accounting, as well as four other key individuals. Their group was charged with exploring the options and coming back to the full Working Committee with two recommendations on:

The minimum information required for the end-to-end process to be effective

Who would do the data entry into the CRM and why

The project manager also requested the supporting rationale for the two recommendations. It was a way to get the working group to think through how they would explain the decisions. (Coincidentally, the project manager had the content of the communications surrounding the decision!)

You can begin to see the value of this approach for communicating the decisions the project is making related to the question of data entry. Later on, if the accounting people grumbled about the lack of information or the sales team complained about entering orders into the CRM system, they could be reminded that their peers made the decision. It was endorsed by the full Working Committee and sanctioned by senior management. That was a powerful message and could be delivered by the right people who have credibility with each group.

Second, projects often uncover bad business practices that are really out of scope for the project. As an example in our case study, the project team learned that one of the key problems in moving contracts from sales to manufacturing for order scheduling was the length of time the legal department took to review contracts. It was pretty clear that this team should not take on a potential process problem within the legal department. Therefore, the project manager went to the champion and encouraged the organization of a working group consisting of sales, legal, and manufacturing to deal with this issue. This action meant that the issue was immediately taken out of the Working Committee and the project team’s scope of work. The champion was now responsible for getting that piece of work completed. And it had a major benefit in solving a serious business problem that was affecting customer responsiveness.

In both of these situations, the Working Committee and the working groups acted as the primary communication vehicles related to the problems the project was seeking to solve, as well as the decisions that were being made. That is not to say that direct communications informing key stakeholders were no longer needed: Any project manager must still do the job of ensuring that multiple lines of communication remain open. However, the job of communication is made much easier by using this approach.

Finally, you must realize that the biggest potential obstacle to the successful implementation of project deliverables is the middle management layer within the company. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense: Middle managers are critical linchpins in the organization. You must keep these managers well informed so that you are informed and aware of possible concerns they have regarding your project. The Working Committee members can be the perfectly suited people to communicate with these managers. If the project manager in this case study was hearing concerns about the project from some of the manufacturing supervisors, who better to go with her to talk with them than the manufacturing representative from the Working Committee? We’ll talk more about how to work with them and how to craft the messages when we get to the communications plan in Chapter 10. And in Chapter 11 we will look at how to use the communication plan to address potential project risks.

Points to Remember

Determine how involved the management needs to be in your project.

Provide the appropriate leaders with a script on when you will call on them.

Develop a Working Committee to make the business decisions related to the project.

Identify a champion who can lead the Working Committee and also has the credibility to engage the leadership when their presence is required.