Colin D. Ellis's Blog, page 24

The Project Sponsor's New Clothes

In his 1837 short story The Emperor’s New Clothes, Danish author Hans Christian Anderson wrote about a vain king obsessed with his appearance. One day, two weavers (who were looking to exploit the king) promised the emperor a new suit of clothes of superior quality that they said were invisible to those who are unfit for their positions, stupid or incompetent. 

Not wanting to appear to be any of these things, the emperor pretended to be able to see these new clothes as did everyone around him. As he paraded through the streets in his new clothes, the people - not wanting to appear stupid or incompetent - also pretended to be able to see them until a child, who didn’t understand the need for the pretence, shouted out ‘But he has nothing on!’. The bubble of pretence burst and everyone repeated what the child had said, whilst the king, realising what he’d said was true, simply carried on as if nothing were different.

I remember hearing this story as a child and being ever so slightly confused. Although to be fair, between the ages of 1-7, I was slightly confused about everything. Only when I started work did its significance dawn upon me.

I thought about it again a few weeks ago when meeting with a senior executive of a financial institution, who referred to project sponsorship as ‘wearing a different hat’.

My response was ‘It’s not a different hat, it’s a completely different set of clothes. And unfortunately, you can’t always see them.’

His assertion during the meeting was that project managers simply weren’t good enough, regardless of the methods they used. In his eyes they were a heady mix of lazy, unmotivated and rudderless types lurching from one failure to another.

As the self-appointed realistic optimistic spokesperson for project management worldwide, I felt the need to stand up for my profession and let him know that committed executive sponsorship is still the number one contributor to project success (1), and had been for some time.

That countless reviews around the world continue to pinpoint the reasons for failure and that the role played by the sponsor was principal among them.

That 48% of organisations do not have an effective or engaged sponsor. (2)

That for the last 20 years we spent billions of dollars upskilling project managers, for no tangible increase in project success (3), but in organisations where 80 percent of projects have executive sponsor support, 65 percent more projects are successful. (4)

That, whenever I run project leadership development programs for organisations, executives are often too busy to attend or it’s simply not a priority.

That Accenture found the US government could save as much as $995bn by 2025 by increasing efficiency in program management practices, starting with the role of the sponsor. (5)

That senior managers - regardless of the amount of detail placed before them - are still reluctant to make critical decisions about projects. (6)

Or that large projects continue to fail around the world as a result of senior management weakness. (7)

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe poor project management is solely to blame for continuing project failure. However, I’m doing a lot of work around the world and I see a lot of naked project sponsors and no-one is telling them to put something on.

My new book The Project Rots From The Head: How Senior Managers Can Stop Projects From Failing, Forever is out now! Order your copy here.

Illustration by Red Cheeks Factory

Sources: 
1. Standish Group Chaos Report
2. KPMG Driving Business Performance, PM Survey 2017
3. Standish Group Chaos Report
4. PMI Pulse of the Profession Report 2016
5. Improving Program Management in the Federal Government
6. Victorian Ombudsman investigation into ICT-enabled projects
7. HUD Needs to Address Management and Governance Weaknesses That Jeopardize Its Modernization Efforts

Project Managers: Are you Getting (and Giving) Gratitude?

"Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough." - Oprah Winfrey

My favourite project sponsors were the ones that took time out to build and nurture a relationship with me, hold me to account for the promises that I made, invest in my personal and professional development and who said thank you for the work that I did.

The work that I did wasn’t always to the highest quality and I made a fair few mistakes. However, despite this, they always took the time out to show their gratitude for the work I was doing and the energy that I was putting in.

I was talking to an executive in the US last week about helping them evolve their delivery culture. When I asked what the sponsors did to show their gratitude for the work that project managers did, he said ‘what do you mean?’. Which wasn't the answer I was looking for.

He went on to say that it’s hard to say thank you for a service they didn’t feel they were getting.

Gratitude isn’t as straightforward as we think. I empathised with this person, but by the same token, I didn’t feel the organisation had done enough to define what a quality service looked like, so the project managers were always unlikely to meet it (which, of course, was the reason for his call).

Project managers need to be better at getting clear on the expectations of sponsors. What does good look like? How will we know if I’ve achieved it? How do we use feedback to improve our performance?

If you’re doing all of this but not receiving thanks for the work that you do, then you’ll quickly become disengaged and the project will lose momentum.

According to research company Gallup, disengaged employees cost US businesses $450-$550bn per year (it's $25bn per year in Australia) and the turnover cost of replacing a member of staff is roughly one year's worth of their salary.

Given that project managers are at the forefront of organisational transformation, we can’t afford to let this happen.

So what to do when you don’t receive gratitude? You ask for it.

Of course, this isn’t something we’re conditioned to do in the office, although those with children know that it isn’t a problem at home! When we put food in front of them and we don’t hear any gratitude, we stop and say ‘what do you say?’

Now I’m not suggesting that you treat project sponsors like children (well, not all of you anyway), but given how important gratitude is to our mental strength and physical health it’s vital that we get better at asking for it.

As Laura Trice said in her TEDtalk, It’s not a sign of weakness or insecurity, it’s a basic human requirement for a job well done. If you’re not getting it, you need to ask for it and if you're not giving it to your team, you need to start. Their needs are the same as yours.

If you’re a project sponsor then you should already know that the success of a project is down to your level of engagement and how well you’re managing the project manager.

You can’t ‘set and forget’ when it comes to leadership. You have to stay on top of progress, be emotionally mature and continually check-in with the team to ensure that they feel appreciated for the work that they do.

American lecturer and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson said, ‘Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.’

All things.

Show that you care. Give a little gratitude.

Pick your project manager wisely

The Directing Successful Projects with PRINCE2 guide is really, really clear about one thing: 'One of the most important decisions a newly appointed [sponsor] will make is who to appoint to manage the project.

The choice of the PM will be based on aspects of the project, such as its importance to the business, its urgency, size, duration, technical complexity, political complexity, type (construction, IT, product development etc.) and, perhaps, the clarity of the requirements.

These must be matched against the capabilities, experience and availability of candidates.'

One of the most important decisions. That's a statement of just how important it is for your project that you get exactly the right person to lead it. Not just any person. Not the person 'given' to you by IT. Not a member of the accounts team because no-one else wants to do it. But the right person.

A person who knows what it means to lead, build a team, create a strong plan, manage upwards and who can find ways to get things done in order to meet the expectations of you and your steering committee.

What you don't want to do is pick someone who isn't any of that or who will simply tell you what you want to hear. Seth Godin, calls these people Sheepwalkers. Staff who've been 'raised' to be obedient. That's the last thing you need on a project.

Simon Sinek in his book Start with Why says that 'The goal is to hire people who believe what you believe.'

While Richard Sheridan in his book Joy Inc. says that you should 'Hire humans, not polished resumes.'

And resumes is how we've hired project managers for the last 10 years. We've focused our attention on the badges that they've attained (PRINCE2, PMP, Agile etc.) rather than their resilience, attention to detail, ability to plan or, crucially, how they treat the people that work with them.

According to a P2 Consulting project management survey in 2015, ‘there is no correlation between the organisations that report high levels of certification and those organisations that achieve positive results’. However, this isn’t just about certificates, because as I’ve said many times, it’s important that people have these technical skills.

It’s easier to filter people out by the fact that they haven’t got a certificate than it is through more (so-called) subjective measures such as the leadership they provide, the teams they create or the stakeholders who have been delighted with the experience they’ve had.

To find the best fit – ask better questions

Some of the best project managers I’ve ever hired haven’t had a certificate or much experience. Indeed the best project manager I ever hired had previously been an executive assistant. To find these people I ensured that the information they provided as part of the recruitment process gave us the opportunity to assess their leadership potential. By this I mean they included statements about the skills they’ve applied to be the best version of themselves, the environments they have created, and how they have consistently used feedback from stakeholders to improve their performance.

As with project methods, there’s no best practice when it comes to hiring project managers, as each organisation is different. However, here are five good practices that you can adopt. These good practices may add time and cost to your recruitment process (even for internal hires), however, the goal has to be quality as only this will give you the delivery results that you’re looking for.

1. Ask for written recommendations from stakeholders - How many reference checks have actually told you something that you hadn’t already heard in the interview? It will likely be none or one. Instead, why not ask for written recommendations from project sponsors or stakeholders that you can follow up on to be reassured of their credentials before wasting more time and energy in interviews?

2. Ask them about their values - The very best project managers have a set of values that they exhibit on every piece of work they undertake. This is what drives their performance. You want to know that the values they hold match up with your expectations before they start, so get them to list them in their application.

3. Ask them about the best team they created and how they did it - Get the candidates to describe in 200 words or less the best project team and culture they ever created, how they did it and what was so good about it. Also ask them how they’d go about recreating something similar in your organisation. Forget all those ‘describe a time when…’ prescribed answers in interviews. Find out how simply they can provide information about one of the most important parts of project management before you set them loose on your project.

4. Ask them what the biggest thing they learned about themselves on their last project was - Great leaders (and the best project managers are great leaders) will constantly strive to better themselves and that means learning from mistakes every now and then. Find out how self-aware they are by asking them to share what they’ve learned about themselves on their last project. You might also want to ask them how they bounced back quickly from failure. One project manager once told me that in six years as a project manager he'd never failed. The interview ended at that point.

5. Ask them about a time when they received great feedback and how it made them feel - We all like praise and project managers are no different. The most tangible evidence of how well a project has been managed and governed is through the feedback provided by stakeholders. Asking them about feedback demonstrates that they’re able to see the good in the cultures that they create, which in turn creates teams that are a positive force for good.

Finding great project managers isn’t easy as the talent pool has been watered down by people who’ve only got a certificate and nothing else. Indeed Ernst & Young recently removed the requirement for new graduates to hold a degree and have moved to human-centred questions instead. This is a clear demonstration that relationship building and communication skills are critically important. Especially for those in customer facing roles.

There are plenty of great project managers out there and when you find one you have to sell them your vision as a sponsor. You have to be clear about the value the project can bring to the organisation and how they have a critical role in a leading a team to achieve just that.

As Ed Catmull said in his book Creativity Inc. 'The obvious pay offs of [hiring] exceptional people are that they innovate, excel, and generally make your company - and by extension you - look good' – and who doesn't want that?!

* This article is an extract from my new book The Project Rots From The Head: How Senior Managers Can Stop Projects From Failing Forever. Click here to download the chapter PDF and pre-order your signed copy at the special price of $25. Please share with your networks and communities, especially those who may need some help in 'sponsoring to success'! 

How To Suck At Project Management

If you want to prove to other organisations that you really suck at project management, there are so many ways to do it. For a start, The Standish Group produces a Chaos Report every year and in it they outline the factors that make projects successful. You should ignore this (particularly the bit around the importance of having emotionally mature people). Similarly with the the Project Management Institute’s Pulse of the Profession reports. Their blueprint for success (or Champions as they call them) would just be a distraction.

There are many other surveys that produce statistics which contain lists of the mistakes that are made over again when it comes to any kind of project delivery, so check which are relevant to you right now and ensure that you change nothing.

Here’s a few more pointers if you’re still unsure as to where to go wrong.

Set Unrealistic Targets

One way to demotivate everyone - this is an important failure mechanism - involved in a project is to pad the business case (if there even is one!) with grand statements about cost and time savings. Think you’ll save $50,000? Let’s make it a round million. Think a new IT system will save five minutes per day of someone’s time? Let’s plan to make 10 people redundant. Whatever the target, make sure it’s one that stretches the bounds of believability and doesn’t line up with any kind of strategy you may have.

Ensure Senior Managers Don’t Have Time for Governance 

It’s well documented that sponsoring a project is hard work, has different responsibilities to business as usual tasks and takes up time. Therefore, as well as ensuring that precious time isn’t wasted on them attending unnecessary planning sessions (see below), you also want to ADD more projects to your senior manager’s plate. You should constantly look for opportunities to do this, in order to create a level of disinterest necessary for project failure. Take care not to upskill them or cancel any other projects, as prioritisation is overrated. Make everything top priority and watch in awe as decisions aren’t made and projects fail. It’ll be poetic.

Skip Planning

The best projects bring people together. These people spend time learning to be a team, before working together over a period of weeks and months to build a plan that confirms whether the targets you’ve set in the business case (or email, that’s a better way to do it) are realistic or not. So you definitely want to skip this entire phase. Don’t go near it or do anything at all to encourage it. Remember, getting things right and doing things in the right way isn’t the goal here. Just take what you thought was possible - based on the consultants that you employed to tell you what you wanted to hear - and press play. Job done.

Invest in Processes But Not Leadership

If you want consistency, repeatability, role modelling and cultural evolution in the way you fail at your projects, then you’ll definitely want to spend all of your development money on implementing a complex method. Preferably by someone who’s never managed a project. This method should have at least 10 mandatory templates that need to be filled in, a dashboard with lots of traffic lights and an unreadable process diagram to pin up on the wall. If that starts to work, say you’re going ‘agile’ instead. You’ll have to buy a table tennis table and make the office open plan, but it’ll be worth it to maintain the failure rate. Don’t fall into the trap of training people or asking them to change their mindset. That might improve things as well and you don’t want that!

Make Everyone a Project Manager

Project management is a skill that everyone has. From birth. So regardless of whether you’re fitting out a store, changing a process, writing a new policy (usually on the whim of a government official), implementing an IT system or running an event, make the nearest person to you a project manager. The only criteria they have to meet is a willingness to accept everything the disinterested sponsor says, to question nothing and to rigorously avoid common sense. Oh and if you have a poorly performing individual that you don’t know what to do with simply make them Head of Special Projects. That will help keep the capability where it needs to be.

Being bad at projects is something that any average organisation can achieve and will also ensure that the culture will remain exactly as it is, for eternity. There are some organisations out there investing in things proven to work and seeing positive results in many areas of their business, but you don’t want to be like that, do you?

When will senior managers take project management seriously?

Every year lots of project management surveys tell us the same things we’ve been reading for the last 20 years – namely that more projects fail than succeed. And every year senior managers and executives do little to invest in actively changing the culture of project delivery. Project managers consistently beat their heads against walls, doors and any other solid surface that they can find, at this intransigence.

It was a challenge I faced in almost every senior delivery role I held. In one organisation my project management team had to deliver a capital budget of $125m. My role was to re-energise the team and ensure it had the leadership and team-building skills to be successful. I had a development budget of $20,000. For 35 people. Ridiculous.

There was one role that was different. I was given as much development money as I needed to ‘improve the project management experience’ for our stakeholders. If I didn’t achieve this I would receive no pay increase or bonus. We lifted satisfaction scores by almost 40% in one year.

Getting senior managers to understand the importance of good project management will continue to be a challenge when there’s so little of it around. However, if we don’t invest in the right development and project managers continue to focus on the wrong things, we are facing a never-ending cycle of decline.

The Project Management Institute found, in its Pulse of the Profession report last year, that ‘less than two in five organisations place a high priority on creating a culture that recognises [senior management involvement] as a driver of better project performance. Organisations that place a high priority on creating this culture report 71% of projects meeting original goals and business intent.'

Worryingly, many organisations continually convince themselves that everything is rosy in the project garden, when in fact they have neglected it for years and even those hardy plants that are desperate to grow and thrive, are looking for bees to pollinate them elsewhere. 

In the KPMG New Zealand project management survey released two weeks ago, 61% of organisations surveyed felt that project success rates were improving, despite consistently high failure rates.

That’s like me vehemently believing that politicians are becoming more trustworthy...

If organisations want to improve the rate at which they deliver projects and the performance of them, providing senior managers with the time and training to sponsor projects in the right way is the place to start.

Put some true accountability measures in place (e.g. link project results to KPIs or get regular feedback on performance), ensure they are leadership role models and that they make swift decisions in order to keep projects moving.

For too long, apathy around projects and project management at a senior management level has led to an under-investment into the actual capabilities required – at all levels – to be successful.

As I frequently say in my speeches, you get the project results that the leadership deserves. If your organisation continues to fail, it’s time to buy some more mirrors for the boardroom.

Project sponsors and senior managers have a unique opportunity to positively affect the lives of others and leave a lasting legacy of project success for others to copy. It’s an opportunity that shouldn’t be wasted.

Sign up to Pocket Square, my fortnightly newsletter, and get my free e-book – How Are You Measuring Your Project Managers?

What’s it going to take for senior managers to take project management seriously?

Every year lots of project management surveys tell us the same things we’ve been reading for the last 20 years – namely that more projects fail than succeed. And every year senior managers and executives do little to invest in actively changing the culture of project delivery. Project managers consistently beat their heads against walls, doors and any other solid surface that they can find, at this intransigence.

It was a challenge I faced in almost every senior delivery role I held. In one organisation my project management team had to deliver a capital budget of $125m. My role was to re-energise the team and ensure it had the leadership and team-building skills to be successful. I had a development budget of $20,000. For 35 people. Ridiculous.

There was one role that was different. I was given as much development money as I needed to ‘improve the project management experience’ for our stakeholders. If I didn’t achieve this I would receive no pay increase or bonus. We lifted satisfaction scores by almost 40% in one year.

Getting senior managers to understand the importance of good project management will continue to be a challenge when there’s so little of it around. However, if we don’t invest in the right development and project managers continue to focus on the wrong things, we are facing a never-ending cycle of decline.

The Project Management Institute found, in its Pulse of the Profession report last year, that ‘less than two in five organisations place a high priority on creating a culture that recognises [senior management involvement] as a driver of better project performance. Organisations that place a high priority on creating this culture report 71% of projects meeting original goals and business intent.'

Worryingly, many organisations continually convince themselves that everything is rosy in the project garden, when in fact they have neglected it for years and even those hardy plants that are desperate to grow and thrive, are looking for bees to pollinate them elsewhere. 

In the KPMG New Zealand project management survey released two weeks ago, 61% of organisations surveyed felt that project success rates were improving, despite consistently high failure rates.

That’s like me vehemently believing that politicians are becoming more trustworthy...

If organisations want to improve the rate at which they deliver projects and the performance of them, providing senior managers with the time and training to sponsor projects in the right way is the place to start.

Put some true accountability measures in place (e.g. link project results to KPIs or get regular feedback on performance), ensure they are leadership role models and that they make swift decisions in order to keep projects moving.

For too long, apathy around projects and project management at a senior management level has led to an under-investment into the actual capabilities required – at all levels – to be successful.

As I frequently say in my speeches, you get the project results that the leadership deserves. If your organisation continues to fail, it’s time to buy some more mirrors for the boardroom.

Project sponsors and senior managers have a unique opportunity to positively affect the lives of others and leave a lasting legacy of project success for others to copy. It’s an opportunity that shouldn’t be wasted.

Sign up to Pocket Square, my fortnightly newsletter, and get my free e-book – How Are You Measuring Your Project Managers?

If You Don’t Tell Me How I’m Doing, I’ll Never Know

I remember saying these words to my line manager back in the late 1990s.

As a fledgling project manager it’s fair to say that I often let my own unique communication style take over in meetings. I’d overuse humour, talk over the end of people’s sentences and lacked attention to detail.

I’m able to tell you this because my line manager – during our weekly meeting – told me so, citing examples and comments that people had made. I’d learnt from an early age that getting feedback was critical to improving performance, so I made some notes and resolved to ask for help in addressing the issues faced.

Ready to get down to work, I was then told that they’d been getting this feedback for a number of weeks and confidence in my ability to deliver was low, especially given the complexities we faced.

I was stunned. They’d been getting the feedback for weeks…?

When I was asked for my thoughts I said: ‘If you don’t tell me how I’m doing, I’ll never know. Nothing will improve. I’ll lose any credibility that I have, the project will fail, my confidence will drain and no-one wins. Please, if you get any feedback on my performance, tell me right away so that I can do something about it.’ 

From that moment on, I resolved to ask for regular feedback and sought to learn from my mistakes and from the wisdom of others.

Not all advice is good advice, however well meaning, but asking for it was the first step to improving my performance and becoming clearer on what was expected from my performance.

“I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better. I think that’s the single best piece of advice.”

— Elon Musk










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The ProjectNPS at-a-glance interface

 

As part of my Conscious Project Leader training program (and completely unique in the world of project management capability development), I use ProjectNPS to gather feedback from stakeholders on the service currently being provided by project managers so that it can be benchmarked. I’m continually surprised when senior leaders baulk at this, worried at how the feedback might be interpreted by the project manager.

My response to this is, ‘what’s the consequence of them not finding out?’.

If they’re doing a good job they may never be told that and not feel cared for or wanted by the organisation. Also, the opportunity to use them as a role model or mentor for others may also be lost.

If their performance isn’t where it should be then the best case scenario is that the team will work around the project manager to get the job done; the worst case is that the project will fail and the team will provide generic feedback on the project (not the project manager) as to why and problems will re-surface on their next project.

In both situations, no-one will learn anything and nothing will improve.

Personal feedback is absolutely critical in improving the performance of project managers (or any employee for that matter).

The Office of Personnel Management in the US agrees and they say that in order to be effective, feedback requires three elements:

Specificity - feedback should be delivered by a named individual and relate to a particular goal, objective or milestoneTimeliness - don’t wait until the end of the project or an annual review to provide feedback. Regular feedback and issues-based feedback should be provided as soon as possible so that action can be takenManner - feedback must be presented accurately, positively, factual and complete, with suggestions for improvement. Endless criticism will eventually be ignored, with the person providing it perceived as a trouble-maker.

Individuals who are fearful of feedback are often not willing to look at their own performance. Emotional maturity is the second most important contributor to project success, so what does it say about the emotional intelligence of a project manager who doesn’t want to get better at what they do?

Organisations that collect feedback on projects not people, run the risk of the collective being blamed rather than focussing on the behaviours and skills of those leading them. Collecting it on a project is old fashioned and doesn’t reflect the fact that project management is a service and the expectations of the stakeholders need to be set and met regularly in order for projects to be successful. It’d be too easy for the project manager to say ‘that’s someone else, not me’.

Improvement is personal, so feedback has to be, too.

We live in a society that now expects instant reviews and feedback – the sharing economy is built on the concept of capturing and disseminating feedback. From rating systems to recommendations, we are increasingly comfortable with the process of providing and acting on reviews. It’s inevitable that businesses would recognise and respond to the demand for ‘always on’ feedback by replacing annual performance reviews with more regular feedback cycles. 

Software company Adobe has used a ‘check-in’ approach for years, in which a manager would continually ‘check-in’ on progress providing feedback, development, motivation and mentoring on a regular basis. General Electric (GE) enables its 300,000 employees worldwide to receive instant feedback about their performance through an app. The Team Sky professional cycling team uses a quick and simple smartphone app to set expectations and capture performance evaluation and opportunities for improvement. Accenture sidelined its annual performance review for an ongoing feedback system, Deloitte ditched annual reviews and, according to HBR, more than one third of US companies ‘from Silicon Valley to New York... are replacing annual reviews with frequent, informal check-ins between managers and employees’.

The movement to ‘always-on’ feedback as a mechanism for improvement is in full flight. Are you on board?

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It's not what you say, it's how you say it to me

In a project management hangout that I was running in Melbourne last week, I shared a model of mine called the four personalities of a project manager. It was shared by one of the attendees on LinkedIn and has garnered many comments since then.

It’s a model I shared in a blog in September last year [click here to read it] and I used it to emphasise how important self-awareness - and particularly your predominant communication style - is for project managers to be able to present to senior management in a way that’s effective.

Like most I was told very early on in my career that senior managers are the following:

BusyBig picture thinkersLooking for passionDetail focusedRisk aversePonderous decision makers... and so on and so forth

The funny thing is that I started to notice that no one senior manager was all of these things, they were all different.

Often, the style we adopt is one which we’ve seen others doing. I’ve worked for a number of great leaders who had mastered what it took to communicate to different personalities in different ways, but not all of their styles worked for me, largely because I had not taken the time to understand my own communication preferences.

I’ve read up a lot on communication over the years. How a project manager communicates is a key differentiator between success and failure in projects yet it’s still something that most are not very good at, despite the resources and research available.

In 1967, Dr Albert Mehrabian came up with the 7-38-55% rule of communication:

7% is verbal - what is said38% is voice - how it’s said55% is body - how it’s displayed

Peter Drucker reinforced this by saying ‘The most important thing in communication is hearing what is not said.’ Jim Rohn said that ‘Effective communication is 20% what you know and 80% about what you feel you know.’

And it’s not that any of these are wrong, it’s just that they’re not very helpful if you’re looking to become the best communicator you can be.

In the absence of a communication role model, I did the only thing left to do, I turned to the movies and in Dead Poets Society, I found what great looked like.

The character John Keating, brilliantly played by Robin Williams, demonstrated throughout the movie what it took to lead and motivate a group of disparate personalities. While his preferred style was social, passionate and unconventional, he could very quickly - and unconsciously - switch into detail, empathy, quotes and facts.

He was able to performance manage, inspire, manage upwards and create human connections with all of those around him. It was - and still is - a good example of what great communication looks like.

It is important to remember however, that great communication starts with you understanding your own preferences and style. This is why I spend a full half day of my Conscious Project Leader program working with everyone on getting clear on what they do well and where their opportunities for improvement lie. It’s a session that immediately makes a difference and is a memorable part of the two-day program.

In order to achieve communication greatness, you need to be a variable communicator.

Immovable communicators insist on communicating only in their own preferences and don’t give any thought as to how other personalities would like to receive a message.

Flexible communicators are prepared to change their approach with other personality types, however they never develop the skills to gain support or build trust.

Viable communicators find approaches that are practical and that may work for a moment in time with different personalities given the situation they are in, but they never build on these skills.

Variable communicators can unconsciously switch between different communication styles and motivate teams of multiple personalities at any given time.

Of course, this is not just about project management, it’s true of any role.

Having recently run a Conscious Project Leader program for a team of graduates for a large consulting firm in Sydney, the senior leader in charge felt that it would be good for his sales team to undertake a similar program as they weren’t getting the sales results they were expecting. Variable communication runs through everything that we do. 

Becoming a great communicator means being able to vary your style and message. Remember that effective communication is about tailoring your message to their ears, not expecting them to tailor their ears to your message.

Do you understand your preferences? What do you need to do to become a variable communicator?

5 Real Skills All Project Managers Need

Firstly, let’s get one thing clear, calling these skills ‘soft’ is a complete misnomer, as they are the hardest things to develop and change.

American leadership author Seth Godin recently made a plea for us to call them real skills, ‘Real because they work, because they’re at the heart of what we need to today.’ 

It doesn’t really matter what we call them, however, for any individual to be successful in any role, it’s critical that they ask for feedback on what they do well and what could be done better, then continually work hard at them.

In the case of project management the feedback received will almost certainly always be on these real skills. In fact, in a recent ProjectNPS analysis that we undertook for a client, we found that only 1% of feedback was on the ‘technical’ expertise required to be a project manager – the methods and processes.

There was no feedback at all requesting:

Improved PRINCE2 knowledge and applicationMore regular GANTT chartsGreater detail around the use of templatesMore meetings (although the need for them to be better managed made it onto the list)More detailed project meeting minutes.

Almost all – 99% – of the feedback (good and bad) centred on the personal traits displayed by the individual. And yet, these are the skills that organisations never invest in when they are looking for an improvement in their project management people.

Instead, they’re sent on courses where they are required to answer a multiple choice questionnaire to attain a certificate on theoretical knowledge.

Imagine how powerful that certificate could be if that person had to change a behaviour? Imagine how it would make the individual feel, knowing that with some deliberate practice and willpower, they were able to change a habit formed over a number of years?

Maybe this is why, according to McKinsey, leadership development programs consistently fail. Organisations place too much emphasis on simply completing a course rather than ensuring that individuals have the self-awareness to understand what needs to be fixed, before committing to and then demonstrating personal change. Almost $7bn a year is spent on leadership programs in the US alone, yet it continues to be the number one challenge facing organisations.

As Abraham Maslow once said ‘Self-knowledge and self-improvement is very difficult for most people. It usually requires great courage and a long struggle.’

If the appalling success rates of projects are to improve we have to start investing in programs that give project managers practical insight into how to change, in order that they can make the choice to change and become leaders. These are the skills that set great project managers apart from everyone else and ensure that their services are always retained.

These are the top five real skills project managers need to be successful:

1. Empathy

The ability to see things from someone else’s perspective takes effort. It starts with working on our self-awareness and being open to our own emotions in order to help others open up too. Time spent getting to know the people you work with and for is never wasted – knowing their triggers, any cultural sensitivities or even which sports team they have been rooting for over the weekend will help you build genuine relationships and give you the tools to provide an empathetic response when the chips are down. 

2. Variable communication

Different personalities require different communication approaches, so it’s little wonder that emails go unread or that by being direct with someone they may get emotional. Great project leaders are able to tailor their communications and their style to whomever they are conversing with. Once learned, this is a life skill that is never lost

3. Humour

Dame Judi Dench once said ‘I think you should take your job seriously, but not yourself - that is the best combination’ and, of course, she’s right. Everyone has a sense of humour, so project managers need to understand how and when to use this in order to keep motivation and productivity high. Humour can take many forms and must be in line with the team culture that has been created

4. Listening

It is often the things that aren’t said that have the biggest effect on the work being done. In order to be able to hear these, project managers need to practice active listening. Sense what’s being implied rather than said, consider how it’s being delivered and process that against what’s known about the individual (see 1. Empathy) before responding. Putting a device down, turning away from the screen and giving someone complete attention is the best way to find out what’s actually going on

5. Flexibility

In our rush to make everything ‘agile’ it’s important to remember that a flexible mindset is key to its success. In her book Mindset, Carol Dweck calls this having a Growth Mindset. One that is open to possibility and difference of approach and opinion. The waterfall approach isn’t making projects unsuccessful, it’s project managers with fixed mindsets that is. That’s also what’s holding a more agile approach back too!

The ability to be a role model for transformative change is a challenge that all project managers should take on. To do this, we need to fully understand what it means to lead and create great teams, then continually change the approach until we hit the sweet spot.

Organisations have been investing in project management programs that haven’t worked for the last 20 years. My two-day Conscious Project Leader program focuses only on the things that make a real and lasting difference to how you deliver. I measure leadership performance before the program and then again three months after, to make sure that the learnings have been applied.

I’d love to work with you - wherever you are in the world! - and help you transform the way that you deliver projects forever, so please get in touch to arrange a time for us to talk further.

Teamwork – the ultimate competitive advantage

In his book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni states that "Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare."

I couldn’t agree more and yet wonder how we’ve got ourselves into the position where real teamwork is rare?

In its recent survey Can humans thrive in a bot economy? Australian software company Atlassian found that 75% of cross-functional teams report being dysfunctional, and increases in productivity are the lowest they’ve been in 30 years. It goes on to report that 59% of respondents identify communication as the biggest obstacle to team success.

This is never more evident than in the projects we undertake.

The best projects you or your organisation will ever work on are the result of the person that leads it or the environment they create. This has always been the case and always will be.

Despite this, projects continue to fail at an alarming rate around the world. Money is wasted on trying to force people down a ‘process path’ or on trying to achieve a high-level of consistency by getting everyone to fill in a form, in the same way.

What makes projects successful is the relationships we build and how we utilise them to collaborate with the different members of the team.

Collaboration – or teamwork as we used to call it – only works well when everyone understands why we’re doing what we’re doing, agrees on how we’ll collectively behave and then we hold each other to our promises. In short, we create a collective culture that we can all be proud of, where we don’t talk about how to work together, it just happens. This is the foundation for project success.

Teamwork takes effort

Teamwork is often taken for granted in projects. Organisations believe that they can identify people to be on a project team and magic will happen. Sometimes it does, but only if the person leading the team takes the time and effort to understand each personality and uses techniques and skills to create an environment that supports different ways of working. These project managers don't think of their needs when doing this; they think about the collective need of the people within the team.

They understand that to succeed there needs to be a shared vision, collective ownership and responsibility for progress, and a willingness to challenge each other to be better. These teams think and talk in terms of 'We' and they're led by a project manager.

It’s not about You, I or They

When project managers think and talk in terms of 'You', they are distancing themselves from the task in hand and passing responsibility across to the person receiving it. The person may also feel that they would be blamed should the task not go as planned.  

When project managers think and speak in terms of 'I', they are shouldering a lot of the responsibility themselves and there's a danger that they'll focus on the detail of the project and not their job of managing it. The team may also get the impression that the project manager is claiming responsibility for the collective success of all they achieve. The English language is the only language in the world that capitalises the word ‘I’ and we have to reduce the use of this as much as we possibly can if we’re to shift the focus onto greater teamwork.

When project managers think and talk in terms of 'They', they are distancing themselves from the team and may find themselves alienated from the very thing they need to get the job done successfully. It could create a barrier and while the team may get the work done, they'd be doing it despite the project manager. As Dwight D. Eisenhower said, 'It's better to have one person working with you, than three people working for you.'

The Power of 'We' in project management

Only when project managers think and talk in terms of 'We' do they create a team with a shared purpose, responsibility, success and failure. A team that is accepting of all personalities, skills, knowledge and circumstances. A team committed to being the difference they want to see in others and to creating an experience like no other. A team that is happier and gets more done (according to the University of Warwick in the UK).

These teams are happier, feel empowered, trust each other and hold each other to account. They celebrate every success, recognise great behaviour and communication and create workspaces in which every personality can do their best work.

They create a tangible vibrancy. And you want to be part of it.

I’ve worked on and been part of creating these kinds of teams. They taught me what it means to be committed and consistent and they have given me the best work memories.

Teamwork remains the ultimate competitive advantage. What are you doing to ensure that it’s not a rare thing in your project or organisation?