Finding The Right Question

What Is the Relationship Between Project Success and Organizational Culture?

Understanding that dynamic could lead to a different approach to assessing project risk and managing project success.

First an underlying premise: culture is what people experience when they observe the behavior of their leaders.

If so, the question for Project Managers therefore is not only what culture does it take for their project to succeed, but more pointedly, what role does the Project Manager play in shifting organizational behaviors toward cultures that support project success.

Much has been written about agile projects and agile organizations, and the intersection of culture and project management. In many cases there is a vicious circle: organizations that are trying to become more agile need projects that are executed using agile principles which need organizations to support agile behavior and thinking, but the organizational culture is not yet so aligned.

This relationship between organizational culture and project success, however, transcends the methodology being applied. Culture is a driving factor for project success or failure, whether the approach is based on agile, traditional waterfall, or any other “in vogue” method. Perhaps it is time to reflect not on project management “best practices,” but on project management “best supporting cultures.”

There is a framework for assessing project risk and for managing to project success that is well proven, and is independent of project methodology. It is called The Seven Keys To Success. It was developed as a result of the merger of Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand project management experiences, and has been adopted by IBM, not just in its Global Business Services unit, but by the company-wide PM Center of Excellence.  It has been effectively used to understand “root cause” problems for failures as well as best practices to achieve success, in all manner of projects, all over the world, spanning the last twenty years.

Here is a quick summary:

Success Factor	Biggest Risk	Best Practice
Stakeholders are committed	Inadequate/ineffective project governance	Steering committee actively led by the executive most directly responsible for the business benefits
Business benefits will be realized	Poorly communicated business case	All critical project decisions made in support of realizing the business case
Work and schedule are predictable	No meaningful plan or progress reporting	Schedule and budget tied to critical and measurable milestones
Scope is realistic and managed	First-of-a-kind or “moon shot” ambition	Active issues management process involving project governance
Technical risks are mitigated	“Big bang” approach to implementation	Thorough and appropriate testing at all stages
Team is high performing	Inexperienced staff and low team morale	Team of diverse experiences in which trust levels are high
Delivery organization benefits will be realized	IT organization and/or contractors are viewed as “vendors”	IT organization and/or contractors are treated as business partners

 

Now think about that framework in terms of organizational cultures or behaviors that either threaten or actively support project success. Here is a partial list of cultural aspects that can either negatively affect or actively support a healthy outcome in terms of the framework of the Seven Keys To Success:

Success Factor	Negative Culture Indicators	Positive Culture and Behaviors
Stakeholders are committed	Stovepipe mentality	Effective cross-functional and cross-geography collaboration
Business benefits will be realized	Competitive complacency	C-suite focused on growth and marketplace success
Work and schedule are predictable	“We love fire drills”	Management time devoted to planning and re-planning
Scope is realistic and managed	“Shoot the messenger”	Governance processes that reward early recognition of changes to plan
Technical risks are mitigated	Hero mentality	“Don’t gamble unless we can afford to lose” mentality
Team is high performing	Lack of trust	Project staff are inspired by their management
Delivery organization benefits will be realized	“Who cares, as long as they stay within budget”	“We, the business owners, need them to succeed too”

 

Given the above, the question is not only what culture does it take to support project success, but what role does the Project Manager play in shifting organizational behaviors toward supportive cultures.

Expert level project managers lead with vision, develop trusted advisor relationships, embrace difficult conversations, and create a high-performing team based on mutual trust. They are encouraging senior business leaders to lead and behave in supportive ways, and they are leading their own teams in ways that inspire high levels of trust and performance.

Expert project managers are effectively shifting organizational culture around them in directions that will support success.

In today’s world, the highest calling for Project Managers is to be agents of cultural change, not simply a leader of a successful project outcome.

Agile: Which comes first, the method or the culture?

There is a lot being written these days about agile projects and agile organizations, and it got me to thinking about the intersection of culture and project management.

Here’s the difficult circularity: organizations that are trying to become more agile need projects that are executed using agile principles which need organizations to support agile behavior and thinking which need…

Then it dawned on me that perhaps it was ever thus, and we were too lost in PM best practices to focus on the impact of organizational culture.

I have spent the better part of my career on deepening our understanding of methods and practices, determining “root cause” problems for failures, and best practices to avoid failures. But I never bothered to articulate “best cultures” to support project success, or cultural dimensions that doomed some projects to failure.

For example, here are some cultural aspects (and you or I could list many more) that can negatively affect a healthy outcome in terms of the framework of the Seven Keys To Success:

Success Key	Negative Culture Indicators
Stakeholders Are Committed	Stovepipe mentality
Business Benefits Will Be Realized	Competitive complacency
Work And Schedule Are Predicted	We love fire drills
Scope Is Realistic And Managed	Shoot the messenger
Team Is High Performing	Lack of trust
Technical Risks Are Mitigated	Hero mentality
Delivery Organization Benefits Will Be Realized	IT organizations and contractors are suppliers, not partners

My perspective on culture is influenced by the notion that culture is what people feel when they observe the behavior of their leaders. So my question now is not what culture does it take, but what role does the Project Manager play in shifting organizational behaviors toward supportive cultures.

“Wait, that goes way above my pay grade,” you say? Well, if the Project Manager is not ready to stand before a Steering Committee and tell them what they need to hear, not simply what they want to hear, then he or she is in the wrong profession. Expert level project managers lead with vision, develop trusted advisor relationships, embrace difficult conversations, and create a high-performing team based on mutual trust. They are effectively shifting organizational culture around them in directions that will support success.

I have always felt that Project Managers are in the business of managing change.

With respect to agile organizations and agile project methods, I now believe that the highest calling for Project Managers is to be agents of cultural change.

Are C-level executives ready to ask that of their Project Managers? Are Project Managers willing to take that mission on?

The answer is “yes” in organizations that are becoming more agile.

Will you speak truth to power?

Your boss just recommended the dumbest idea. Worse yet, the Senior Vice President - for whom you are slated to lead her key strategic initiative - just demanded an implementation schedule that is unrealistic. Your boss’s boss just asked you to fill a key role on your team with his inexperienced protégé.

There is enough power-related insanity in the bigger world these days. Now it seems to be invading your own working world.

Yikes! What to do?

Well, not to belabor the obvious, but you have two choices: acquiesce, or object.

Your first thought is to acquiesce, because not to do so would be a CLM (career limiting move).

But here’s my thought for your consideration. Sometimes, life gives you only two choices: make a potential career-changing decision now, or have an actual one made for you later.

One thing is certain. People who ask you to do the impossible don’t know as much – and aren’t as experienced – as you are in the specific domain under discussion. Furthermore, it is entirely likely that if they are pushed (e.g. you say the you can’t be successful, but perhaps they can find someone else who will), they will quickly re-evaluate and back off their demands.

On the other hand, they may not, and will punish you for insubordination. Now there’s an alternate universe that seems highly unattractive!

So when your gut tells you it is wrong, know that you have the hard-earned experience to be confident that you are right!

Do you want to make a choice now, or have one made for you later?

Simple choice, but not an easy decision. True for project managers, and now, apparently, true for citizens and elected officials.

What If You Could Accelerate “Time To Wisdom”?

What does it take to acquire deeper expertise in project management? To build wisdom beyond simply learning skills? Too often, this takes years of experience, often at significant cost to the enterprise when the wisdom gained by the individual comes at the expense of significant failure at the enterprise level.

One company – WTRI - has a proven approach to developing this expertise using virtual world technology, driven by an underlying engine that simulates complex business and real world events, and that is structured in accordance with principles from the field of cognitive science. The impact is to create a “safe-fail” environment wherein people can first un-learn the limitations of their current thinking and perspective and consequently try different approaches that measurably migrate them upward toward a level of “intuitive expert”. And all within a couple of months, not years, and with no real cost of failing, which is so cognitively necessary to this kind of learning.

How does this actually work?

WTRI has built its own proprietary virtual world, coupled to its proprietary event generator. The result is a virtual world as big as the world itself and one that embodies the dynamic economic models of the world and of companies. It can be as complex as it needs to be, without the typical constraint to online learning of highly scripted and overly simplified scenarios.  

The projects are located in companies that – while fictional – are fully fleshed out in terms of their finances, products, history and technologies. The companies are located in a world economy that – while fictional – is fully fleshed out with the issues facing global and multi-national companies today, such as integrating supply chains and managing regulatory constraints.

It is just this kind of complexity that separates “expert” project managers from the rest. The Dreyfus scale of expertise, from Level One to Level Five, is well established scientifically and is widely used. With respect to project managers, Level Five accomplished veterans manage stakeholders well, and they know who the “real” stakeholder is. They manage projects in such a way as to provide the hoped for business benefits, even if the project plan, strictly executed, would not do that.  They know when to make changes and have the ability to sell the changes to stakeholders.  When difficulties arise – even major ones – they are able to look at these events as opportunities for greater results rather than as insurmountable problems or risks to be avoided.

Each team of participant learners gets two attempts at the exercise, in accordance with the cognitive science precept that failure is very important to accelerating learning.   Participants who are not operating at the expert level will miss the big picture on the first try and will not achieve successful results. After a debrief, they are given a second chance, with some programmed additional challenges to the events within and outside the project.

In this second pass, by focusing on key relationships and ultimate business outcomes, they inevitably perform at a Dreyfus level which is measurably higher than where they began before the first pass, as assessed in three ways:

• The financial success or the business benefits delivered by the project; there were the expected business benefits, which were not easy to actualize given the complexity of the project, but which could also be exceeded if the project managers identified hidden opportunities
• The Seven Keys, a “project health” metric developed by PWC and IBM Global Business Services; both the team and the stakeholders rate the project multiple times on seven critical dimensions and discuss any discrepancies in their perspectives
• A set of 30 challenges that elicit “judgments” that measure the team’s Dreyfus level. 

In documented outcomes, some participants who began at Level Two reached Level Four on the Dreyfus scale on many of the challenges. To put this in context, Human Resource data shows that moving from a Level Two to a Level Four in performance would normally take from 10-15 years, depending on opportunities, leadership and types of experiences.  

There are many “distance learning” technologies and sponsoring companies, many of which are focused on project managers. None, however, have the measurable impact that WTRI achieves with its unique blend of virtual worlds, realistic and complex business simulation, and the application of the principles of cognitive science.

WTRI’s solution creates a significant shift - in expertise not merely skills, in months not years, without the cost of failure.

What is that worth?

What Can You Learn from the School of Virtual Knocks?

All the really good (read “expert”) project managers I know or have heard of have become so through years of experience, through which they have gained as much scar tissue as they have wisdom.

Must it always be so?  Perhaps not.

Here is a recent article about research that seems to demonstrate otherwise.

Admittedly, this article does not purport to create experts (Level 5 on the Dreyfus scale of expertise). 

But it does claim that it moved a number of participants from Novice or Advanced Beginner (Levels 1 and 2) to Intermediate or Competent (Levels 3 and 4).  This acquisition of expertise in real life can typically require 10 years or more, not to mention at what cost of any failures or errors committed along the way.

Interestingly, when I mentioned this to a group of highly experienced consultants and project managers, most of whom were in their 40’s and early 50’s, my “news” was met with extreme skepticism.  When I probed a bit deeper, the negative reaction stemmed from the perceived threat that their hard-won expertise might be discounted in the job market if younger people could come along so quickly and easily.

I imagine old-time airplane pilots scoffed at the first flight simulators too.  Yet professional training at the highest levels now requires their use.  Schools of Medicine and Nursing require training on simulated patients too, by the way.  

I wonder when project management organizations are going to catch up? I wonder how many untimely "crashes" and "deaths" might be saved?

How Will Big Data and Social Media Change the Nature of Project Management?

It has been perversely comforting over the last 30 years to see that success or failure in managing projects is still determined by the same issues.  Indeed, The Seven Keys To Success framework, when it was conceived 15 years ago, explained the fundamental basis for success or failure of every project in the previous 10 years of history of Coopers & Lybrand Consulting as well as Price Waterhouse Consulting.  It has been in wide-spread use continuously since then in PwC Consulting and now in IBM, and has helped many Project Managers successfully navigate challenging engagements.  And yet there also remain too many times that outcomes are not successful.  Inevitably, the reasons – and the missed opportunities that would have altered the course of history - are always understandable against that framework.

As I say, perversely comforting.

And yet there are some seismic tremors being felt in the world of technology-driven projects that have even this old dog thinking he may need to learn some new tricks.  I remain convinced that the Seven Keys will continue to be relevant.  What I am curious about is how these two phenomena – Big Data and Social Media for Business – might significantly change the landscape over which our projects are conceived and executed.

Let’s start with Big Data.  This isn’t just an enabling technology.  This is an opportunity to profoundly change businesses – including the business of government – by inventing new benefits arising from merging and analyzing multiple sources of input, some of which are static, but many of which are processed in real time or near-real time.  Current examples include smarter cities such as Rio de Janeiro.  Other examples can be found in smarter health care with personal monitors that send data in near-real time for pattern diagnostics and alerts to health care providers.  What impact would those kinds of projects have on our notion of methods, of business benefit realization, of the breadth of stakeholder landscapes, and of mitigating technical risks?

Now consider social media.  Beyond the Big Data aspects (e.g. mining Twitter and Google traffic for behavioral patterns), I am intrigued by the prospects that might arise from crowd-sourcing.  How might a project engage a much broader set of stakeholders to understand requirements or test user interfaces using social media?  How might a project team find and test technical solutions using social media?  Will this, in fact, become the next wave in the realm of knowledge management?  Who needs to capture knowledge artifacts in searchable databases if you can connect in real time to the right mind?

Whatever the future of projects and project management bring, I am pretty confident that it will be quite different from the typical project of today. 

I’m also pretty confident that five or ten years from now I will still find our collective track records of success perversely comforting.

What is your moral compass for navigating corporate life?

Here’s a scenario:  your company is counting on you to profitably deliver an outcome for which your client has agreed to pay a great deal, and upon which your client’s business performance is heavily dependent.  If you perform well, you will be rewarded with a significant promotion.  Your team, and especially the key players who have been working overtime for the last 6 months, have advised that a 2-month delay in the schedule will be necessary.  This will delay the client’s business benefit and will negatively affect the profitability of the contract.

Whose interests are paramount?   To whom do you owe the greatest loyalty:  your client, your company, your people, or yourself?  How do you make that decision?

At any level of management, including the executive levels, and in almost any kind of business, we are tasked to do four things:

• Bring value to our clients or customers
• Bring value to our company
• Bring value to the people we lead and influence
• Bring value to ourselves and our career.

Indeed, what differentiates the role of a manager versus a director versus an entry-level executive versus a senior executive is defined by the scope of responsibilities in each of those four areas. 

And moral dilemmas are defined and created by the potential conflict between two or more of those areas.  In fact, the scenario described above has all four in play.  So what would you do?  More interestingly, how would you decide?

I don’t claim to have all the answers, or even to have always behaved over the course of my career to the highest moral standards.  Here is what I do believe. 

First, you must do your best to decide what is “truth” in any given circumstance.  In the above example, you would need to realistically assess the feasibility of adhering to the original schedule.  Can it be done at all by anyone?  Can it be done by this team?  What will be the human cost, if it is in fact feasible?  What will the business cost be to the client if there is a planned 2-month delay?  What will the business cost be to the client, the company, and the people if there is an unplanned 2-month delay?  I am reminded of a line from the recent movie, “Margin Call” when, as the investment company’s world begins to crumble, and the executive in charge of risk management is recalling a key decision of the previous year, she reflects, “It seemed like the only choice at the time.”  The truth, if it were to be analyzed dispassionately, invariably suggests multiple choices.  

Next, I believe our professional obligations generally should be prioritized in the order of client over company over people over oneself.  Why?  Clients come first because we, as individuals and as enterprises, cannot endure if we do otherwise.  The company comes second, because we have an employment contract to honor, based upon which we are being paid to help the company achieve its goals.  And our people come before us, because we cannot sustain a leadership role if people believe we will put our self interests before theirs.

And finally, no matter which area is given preference in any specific circumstance, it should never be at the total expense of any one of the parties.  Any such decision tends to suggest coercion or bullying, in my experience.  While a “win-win” solution may not be possible in every case, there is almost always a way forward that does not involve totally “throwing under the bus” any one area of interest.

One final point:  I do believe that client interests come first, but if one is confident they will be reasonably addressed, then one can go to the next perspective down the chain, and so forth.  Of course, thinking typically is not as sequential as that – it often is quite iterative.  But the notion of the hierarchy still seems to me like a good approach to navigating the waters. 

So the next time you feel at risk of getting lost in the murky morality of corporate life, I suggest you start with the truth, and then decide whose interests should come in what order, while finding some way to acknowledge all the perspectives.

It won’t make your days simpler, but it might make your nights a lot more restful.

What is the point of reporting project or programme status?

In many organizations, the more visible the status is to higher levels of the organization, the less meaning it has.

Wait...what?

So if an executive wants to know how a portfolio of projects is doing, and which projects might be about to experience challenges, she may be pursuing a lost cause?

Yes.  For two reasons. 

First, many project managers have learned that “yellow light” or “red light” status reports make their lives more difficult with unwanted and generally unhelpful attention.  “Green light” status reports, on the other hand, make it easier to focus on productive work, which may allow one to skate through the challenges and end up with a successful outcome.  Maybe.  Hopefully.

Second, as I have written elsewhere, what gets measured and reported on most status reports is rarely of any use in predicting and articulating the need for helpful and timely intervention.  In many organizations, even if their status reports were accurate, the “yellow light” - and especially the “red light” - reports would be describing train wrecks in progress.  Executive intervention would likely be too late to alter the course of history.

So what is an executive responsible for a portfolio to do?  And what is a project manager navigating a career to do?

The answer in both cases, I contend, is to be a leader of cultural change.  Leading downward, executives need to celebrate and reward those project managers who raise flags and ask for help in a timely fashion.  And leading upward, project managers need to report status on the most important, and leading, indicators of project health, along with their recommendations for corrective action by the appropriate executives.

Without such a culture that clearly values the discussion of timely corrective actions, status reports may be little more than a nuisance to project managers and an empty comfort to portfolio executives.

Not much point to that.

What do ambiguous threats and recovery windows have to do with courageous project management?

The Columbia space shuttle disaster of 2003 provided a particularly poignant example for some work done at the Harvard Business School by Amy C. Edmundson, Michael A. Roberto, and Richard M. J. Bohmer[1].  The loss of the ship and all crew members was found to be the result of a foam strike upon launch.  There had been a twenty-year history of such strikes, although this one appeared to be a particularly large piece that may have been capable of causing structural damage.  Asking the CIA to divert some spy satellites to take pictures of the exterior of the shuttle, and ultimately launching a rescue shuttle, would have been the only decisions that might have altered the course of this particular history.  No one seemed individually prepared to argue strongly for either action.  When the decision was made to wait until after re-entry to complete the examination, the fate of the crew was sealed.

What has this got to do with courageous project management?  The Harvard researchers described two phenomena in decision-making within organizations:  ambiguous threats – risks that may have an outcome that is completely unacceptable – and recovery windows – that period of time beyond which no recovery is possible, regardless of subsequent actions.

Does that sound familiar in the project management world?  Looking back on disasters we have been close to, wasn’t it obvious that success was unobtainable unless the poor estimate, inadequate team skills, lack of key sponsorship, or whatever other critical factor was in play had been addressed early and quickly?

I have written before on the topic of courage for project managers.  Let me explore one aspect of the dynamics at play – the apparent powerlessness that project managers face. 

Typically, executives are placing direct or indirect coercive pressure on project managers to “just do it”.  And yet, I believe that it is the project manager with a track record of successful delivery who holds the real power.  Imagine the response if any of us were to stand up and say, “I cannot be successful unless we take the following actions within this specific time frame.  If that can’t happen, you need to find a project manager who you believe can do it.  I am not that person.”  I believe that nine times out of ten, the executives will respond as we need them to, because they know in their fat little hearts that we are right.  In the case of the other one time, we don’t want to be anywhere near the pending disaster anyway.

Acting courageously is easier when you know you’re right and you know you have power.  As you think about your next project, evaluate the ambiguous threats, determine the recovery window for corrective actions, and know that you are the power player in altering the course of this project’s history.

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[1] “Facing ambiguous threats”  Roberto, Michael A; Bohmer, Richard M J; Edmundson, Amy C
Harvard Business Review November 2006 pp106,108-113

What are the most important things to measure, track, and manage in projects and programmes?

Interesting question, but it first requires some insight into what “important” is.

Let me suggest two dimensions of “important”:

1.    The degree of impact something has on our ability to deliver a great outcome, and

2.    Whether our assessment of that factor gives us a leading or a lagging indication of success.

Great.  We now can look at this topic through the lens of a classic two-by-two matrix, like this:

  

And we might conclude that the answer to our big question should lie in the upper right quadrant, and secondarily perhaps in the lower right quadrant.

Or are we spending most of our energy on measuring, tracking, and managing other things?  Well, let’s see…

Elsewhere I have written about seven key factors in project and programme success.  Briefly, they are:

• Stakeholders are committed
• Business benefits will be realized
• Work and schedule are predictable
• Scope is realistic and managed
• Team is high performing
• Technical risks are mitigated
• Delivery organization benefits will be realized.

In my view, and especially as our projects and programmes are played for higher and higher stakes, three of those factors are of supreme importance to success:

• Stakeholder commitment
• Business benefits
• High performing team.

Furthermore, of the seven factors, only two can truly be assessed in a leading indicator fashion:

• Stakeholder commitment, and
• Business benefits.

All others present lagging indications, to a greater or lesser degree.  That is, by the time enough time has elapsed to give a reliable read out, it can be difficult to “correctably” manage to a highly successful outcome.

So by this analysis, our two-by-two matrix looks like this:

        

Yet what do we measure, track, and manage mostly?  Things, I suggest, in the lower left quadrant, especially:

• Work & Schedule (although really only if we are doing some sort of Earned Value Analysis) and
• Delivery Organization Benefits (and only to the extent of understanding the financial costs of delivery versus the promise).

 

 

***   Wait…what???   ***

 

 

So we only measure two of the seven factors, and those two are not the most critical, and in any case, are lagging indicators?

Yikes!!!!

Now, a word about measurement, because I can hear you protesting that it’s awfully hard to quantify Stakeholder Commitment, for one example.

It is possible, and frequently beneficial, to measure without significant precision.  We do it all the time.

If you are driving in winter and are coming to a curve, you “measure” the road conditions to determine if the surface is ice-covered or bare.  You don’t need to know the specific coefficient of friction between your tires and the road surface to decide whether you need to slow down.  And yet the road condition is your leading indicator for successful navigation of the curve.

 

*   *   *   *   *

 

So back to our matrix, and our big question.

As a programme or project manager, where are you going to “up your game” in measuring, tracking, and managing for a successful outcome? 

What does that look like?

And who do you look like, as a leader, not just a manager?

 

Good questions….