Project Leadership Introduction

What is the difference between a corporate project that is successful and a project that isn't?  Why do so many projects deliver mediocre results, and others implode in a maelstrom of recriminations?  Our research shows the answer is that some projects are led effectively - the successful ones - but most aren't led at all!  And the difference between the mediocre and a failure is that a significant risk manifested on what would otherwise have been a mediocre project - so if your project is just running along, you are at risk.

We often see projects being set up by senior executives - we'll call them Project Sponsors - and then handed over to less senior executives (who become de-facto Project Managers), who are often drafted from outside the organisation.  The Project Sponsor wants the outcome, is willing to deploy resources to achieving it, and to clear road-blocks for it, but they don't want to commit a lot of time to it - and given that projects are risky, they'd rather be able to distance themselves from the results in case of failure.

Typically the Project Manager gathers a team and then reaches for the tried-and-tested toolset of project management - methodologies, project plans, issue registers, work breakdown structures, reporting, team meetings - quite appropriately, they manage the project, because project management is necessary, and it consumes all their time and attention.  But project management is not sufficient!  Who is leading the project?  And what does it mean to lead a project?

In some organisations there is a Project Leader role defined in a project team.  The Project Leader is typically drawn from the business, and is a key, senior, customer to the deliverables of the project.  This is a step forward, since it shows commitment and demonstrates that the business backs the project from the outset.  However, as the business customer, the Project Leader typically has a full plate running the existing operations - the very operations that need improving!  Furthermore, they are operations oriented people, rather than project oriented people, and while the fields are related, they are also distinct.

Project Leadership is a joint activity, shared between the Project Sponsor and the Project Manager, and the Project Leader (if there is one). But since they are all short of time and focus, we recommend that their leadership is facilitated by a Project Advocate, an expert on conducting projects. The Project Advocate's varied role includes:

1. Ensuring the emotional engagement of the project team.
   
2. Ensuring that the team is aligned to the scope (and scale) of the project.
   
3. Ensuring that the project complexity has been properly assessed, and acted upon.
   
4. Ensuring that an appropriate methodology and approach has been selected for the project and accepted by the team.
   
5. Supporting the investigation and use of specialist tools for the project work.
   
6. Ensuring that the project team structure and scale is appropriate.
   
7. Ensuring that the project's culture is set with high levels of performance expectations.
   
8. Ensuring that all elements of decision quality are properly implemented.
   
9. Ensuring that the project's external communications reflect the right content and tone to the extended stakeholder group at all times, and are congruent with the team's perspective.
   
10. Ensuring that the project is supported outside of the immediate sponsor group.
    Ensuring that the project fits within the organisational programme.

All of these items deal with the project as a human undertaking; they address issues of motivation, engagement, and the impact of cognitive biases (errors in thinking and behaviour that humans make on a systematic basis).

Project leadership is full of paradox:  For instance, you have to be unshakeably confident in your team's ability to deliver, at the same time as demanding the scrutiny of risk factors.  You have to use the full artillery of influence tools to communicate, at the same time as demanding that decisions are based exclusively on facts.  You have to behave in a completely straight-forward way, at the same time as being acutely aware of organisational politics. You have to nurture the culture of the team…

— Philip Greenwood

Tags: Project, Leadership, Black, Book