8
Your Attitude and Its Role in Engaging an Executive
IN MANAGING YOUR sponsor and other executives, your attitude may be the most important factor in the success of your project. After all, you are the expert in projects, not the sponsor. They are counting on you to deliver the project that is very important to them. Never underestimate the value you bring to a successful project. Attitude is defined by Merriam-Webster’s as “the way you think or feel about something that affects a person’s behavior.”
Ability is what you’re capable of doing.
Motivation determines what you do.
Attitude determines how well you do it.
Lou Holtz, College Football Hall of Fame
Coach and Motivational Speaker
Clearly I am not talking about giving orders but rather about helping sponsors recognize how important they are to the project as well as to the company. Too often, project managers get caught up in the chain of command and do not recognize that one of the key roles they have is to provide guidance to their sponsor and other executives.
In working with my sponsor, I work hard to provide valuable insights and information related to the project, particularly the stakeholders. The attitude that I convey to them continually is that I will cover their back as the project progresses. I even establish a sort of “secret code” with them related to e-mails, as one example.
Alerting the Sponsor
Most of the time, my sponsor gets literally hundreds of e-mails every day—and will usually read those e-mails on a smart phone. The obvious conclusion is that most of those messages will be read in either a cursory way or ignored altogether. When I feel they need to know something right away, I will tell them that I will inform them in two steps.
1.I will write a relatively detailed e-mail with the relevant information and action they need to take or know about because a key stakeholder might be approaching them about it.
2.I send them a text message to their mobile phone with a brief message that they should read the e-mail from me as soon as possible.
Most of the time, I cannot give them song and verse for everything, but they are not surprised if approached about the information or issue. Most of the time, we have a meeting or phone call as soon as it is practical so that I can provide even more details to enhance their understanding.
If you are like me, you recognize that your sponsor probably has technical people who report to her and whose opinion and insights she regards as valuable. For example, if the sponsor is the vice president of human resources, she probably has not been involved in benefits management in quite a while. However, she has a manager whom she trusts to know the answers if asked. I want to be that same type of advisor as it relates to the project.
Use the Sponsor to Gain Credibility
As an example, in one of my projects, my sponsor was a vice president, and he had a key role in providing credibility to the key stakeholders—in short, they respected him very much. As part of keeping our stakeholders informed, the project team had scheduled a town hall–type meeting in the afternoon after the financial markets had closed. I really needed the vice president to be there to show support and answer questions that only he could answer if they came up. However, he was hoping to leave around lunchtime that day to fly to a meeting with an important customer. It is obvious I had to ask him to consider changing his flight so he would be available for the meeting. I reminded him that we had discussed the town hall before as part of the communication plan and why we had decided it would be important for him to attend. Like many busy executives, he had forgotten the timing of the meeting when he asked travel services to schedule his flight. In the end he decided to attend because he:
Understood the importance of his role in that meeting.
Valued my input on why one of his surrogates could not serve that same role.
It meant a lot of inconvenience for him, not to mention a very long day, but he did it. After the meeting, he commented that he had made the right choice because one of the questions he had to field that day could not have been handled by anyone else. I complemented him for his decision and told him I appreciated the sacrifice he was making for the sake of the project. Please trust me when I tell you that at the executive level, people do not receive compliments often unless they are the self-serving type. For me, it confirmed that I was regarded as a trusted advisor by this VP.
Another reason you will need a positive attitude has to do with the resistance to change that your project will encounter. Make no mistake that key stakeholders will push back because you are changing the way they complete their work as a result of completing the project deliverables. You will need your sponsor’s help to address that resistance.
Getting Help with People Who Are Blockers
One of the most difficult situations I have ever faced concerned a manager who absolutely refused to cooperate with the project team. He was the operations manager at a plant where the team was implementing a new automation system. To successfully implement the system, we absolutely had to involve some of the operators at the plant. We needed them to help us by providing various settings and tolerances so that we could calibrate the system correctly under the conditions at that location. The manager refused to allow his people to have any time with us to complete the tasks. The irony was that his rationale was his operators’ lack of time, while the Business Case for implementing the automation system was to free up operators’ time from tasks that could be handled by the automation system! I had at least three meetings with the manager in an attempt to break the stalemate. Finally, I felt that I had no choice but to escalate the problem to my sponsor. My sponsor had no line authority over this operations manager. I also knew very well that the manager and my sponsor, who was part of a technical directorate, did not care for each other personally or professionally. However, without some sort of intervention, the only option I could envision would be to abandon the project at that particular location. As you can imagine, I was mortified that it had come to this end.
Fortunately, I had established the escalation process early in the project. (I will cover this in more detail in Chapter 16.) When I asked for the meeting, I provided my sponsor with an agenda on the topics and some advanced documentation to read in advance.
My attitude was stated right at the beginning of the meeting—I needed my sponsor’s advice on how to proceed under the circumstances. I referenced the advanced materials and brought some backup information just in case. We discussed our options and what it might take to solve the problem. In the end, my sponsor decided that he would have to approach the general manager who supervised the region where the plant was located and who was also the person in charge of the operations manager.
While I waited for the meeting between the sponsor and general manager to happen, I simply had to put the project on hold at that location. Ultimately, the general manager “persuaded” the operation manager to allow his people to work with us.
When we scheduled the time for the team to descend on the plant, I reminded the team members that our attitude would be positive and professional. It was not our usual practice, but I decided that I needed to accompany the technical people in order to be the target of any negative behavior that might occur. I persuaded my sponsor that he should absorb the charges for my time or expenses in this situation. He agreed.
We finished the work and moved on to other locations. Needless to say, I don’t receive any Christmas cards from the operations manager, but he did receive the benefits of a job well-done. I was proud that our team had kept the proper attitude. Our sponsor also appreciated that our attitude had not aggravated an already difficult relationship between the two of them.
Danger Signs
There are some danger signs that mean your positive attitude and approach might be slipping and that you will need to address the issue sooner rather than later. Believe me when I tell you that when these danger signs begin, they seldom correct themselves if your attitude is to ignore them. Here are those signs:
1.If your sponsor is not willing to tackle the tough situations, you will be in for difficult times. This directly relates to the situation I just described.
2.The executive says all the right words but does not act on them. Words without the corresponding deeds will put the project in serious risk, as we all know.
3.The sponsor begins to delegate some of her critical leadership responsibilities to others, usually someone who reports to her.
4.Finally, the sponsor begins to pull key resources from the project.
I am going to suggest something that many may find risky, but in my experience, you must have an open, candid conversation with your sponsor about the implications of her behavior.
I know that is difficult, but I come back to your attitude. You must see yourself as a technical expert in the planning and management of projects. You need to be prepared to be very concrete about the examples you use to illustrate your concerns. Generalizations will not cut it here. For example, you might need to say, “You had committed to attend the town hall meeting as part of the communication planning, and the stakeholders are expecting to see and hear from you.” A vague statement such as, “There is a risk that stakeholders might think you are not supporting the project” will:
Provide no actionable response.
I am asking you to be not aggressive but assertive. Again, Merriam-Webster’s describes “assertive” as “confident, bold, decisive and forthright.” That is the attitude you need to convey.
“I believe the single most significant decision I can make on a day-to-day basis is my choice of attitude. It is more important than my past, my education, my bankroll, my successes or failures, fame or pain, what other people think of me or say about me, my circumstances, or my position.”1
Charles R. Swindoll
Points to Remember
Have a way to alert your sponsor about important information.
Use your sponsor for credibility under certain circumstances.
Engage with your sponsor to deal with blockers.
Stay alert to the danger signs.
