Stephanie Schmid, PMP, director, implementation project management office, ADP, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
PHOTO BY CHAD KIRKLAND
Some leadership qualities are timeless: integrity, passion, vision. Others are not. Henry Ford's hands-on, autocratic approach worked more than a century ago, but today's successful CEOs don't just give marching orders. They build consensus around the right strategy, inspiring rather than simply commanding. And they know how to pivot when faced with new threats.
As the pace of change accelerates, project managers must be ready to pivot, too. Project success isn't just about scope, time and cost anymore. It's about delivering value to the organization—by inspiring team members, solving problems on the fly and securing stakeholder support. The ability to keep projects aligned to strategic goals—and speak up when the business case goes south—has emerged as another essential skill.
“Gone are the days when guidance was just handed down for project leaders to execute against.”
—Joel Verinder, PMP, HMS, Irving, Texas, USA
Executives want project managers to be technically savvy. But they also want them to step up to become leaders. According to PMI's 2017 Pulse of the Profession® report, 73 percent of execs say it's a somewhat or very high priority to develop talent with the necessary leadership skills for the management of projects. (Seventy percent similarly prioritized the development of technical project management skills.)
Joel Verinder, PMP, senior director of application development at the healthcare management company HMS in Irving, Texas, USA, has seen the project manager role evolve dramatically across his career. When he started working as a project manager 14 years ago, at a previous organization, his role was largely limited to managing the triple constraint of schedule, budget and scope. “It took us some time to prove the value of project management before we were given more strategic responsibilities,” he says. “Eventually we were included in higher-level conversations and given the chance to drive more high-visibility and risky efforts.”
Today, more organizations are looking for project managers to lead from day one. Many CEOs have grown accustomed to navigating uncertainty and are increasingly focused on seizing opportunities created by unpredictable circumstances, according to the 2017 PwC CEO Survey.
But flourishing in a volatile business environment requires the seamless integration of strategy and execution. A recent Strategy& global survey of executives found that just 8 percent of top leaders are considered very effective at both execution and strategy creation. That's why organizations are looking for project, program and portfolio leaders who can skillfully execute an initiative—and also seize new strategic advantages.
At HMS, where Mr. Verinder oversees the organization's IT product portfolio, there's no question that strategy and disruption are front and center in his role. “A big piece of my job is partnering with my business counterpart to develop strategy for product lines: Where are we going next? Where's the creative revenue potential? What's the cost-benefit analysis of pursuing this avenue versus that idea?”
At his division's all-day strategy meeting in February, Mr. Verinder weighed in on everything from which products should be in the pipeline to industry and competitive updates that might help guide the team's long-term product strategy. “Gone are the days when guidance was just handed down for project leaders to execute against,” he says.
6 Habits of Bold Leaders
When Deloitte surveyed 600 U.S. executives for its 2016 Business Confidence Report, respondents were in near-unanimous agreement on one point: Bold leaders build breakthrough performance. Yet most respondents worried that companies aren't doing enough to cultivate bold leadership skills among rising leaders—and the “leadership deficit” will likely worsen in the future, according to the report.
These are the traits that set bold leaders apart, according to Deloitte:
1 Setting ambitious goals: This was the most common leadership trait identified.
2 Inviting feedback from colleagues at all levels: Bold leaders take a 360-degree approach to feedback.
3 Innovating: They look for new and better ways of doing things.
4 Proposing ideas their companies might consider controversial: They know it's necessary to push the envelope.
5 Taking risks: This is the least common leadership trait regularly practiced by survey respondents.
6 Building strong teams and empowering them to succeed: Project and program managers who deftly manage teams likely already have this skill.
Forward-facing project leaders are now accustomed to looking far beyond the end of their current project schedule or the calendar year. They're trying to size up what the future might hold for their industry and organization decades down the line.
“Doing projects in the fourth industrial revolution requires a different mindset,” says Shakespeare Hadebe, PMP, project director, Transnet, Johannesburg, South Africa.
This revolution, which blurs the lines between the physical, digital and biological realms, has been in motion for decades, according to the World Economic Forum. With digitalization disrupting every sector—from retail to banking, construction to education—companies must be more open to radical reinvention if they want to stay relevant. Netflix, founded 20 years ago, already has morphed its strategy multiple times. The company that started out renting DVD movies to customers by mail now competes with television networks as a content creation company. General Motors still manufactures automobiles, but it's doubling down on projects to develop autonomous driving vehicles and launch car-sharing networks.
“Doing projects in the fourth industrial revolution requires a different mindset.”
—Shakespeare Hadebe, PMP, Transnet, Johannesburg, South Africa
Red Flags
Three signs your leadership style is stuck in the Stone Age, according to Shakespeare Hadebe, PMP, project director, Transnet, Johannesburg, South Africa.
1 You bristle when challenged: If agility and innovation are the new table stakes, you don't want team members who blindly follow orders. “It's absolutely important to allow your team to bring up their ideas and persuade you past your own thoughts,” he says.
2 You think leadership is a static skill set: If you completed a leadership course 10 years ago, that doesn't mean you're set for life. “I'm always working to deepen my understanding of the business and strategic skills to improve my leadership dexterity,” says Mr. Hadebe. While he has completed courses, he still meets regularly with a mentor.
3 You equate hesitation with lack of engagement: Too often, project leaders get frustrated when a bold new initiative isn't immediately embraced, he says. But you want your team to be as rigorous and analytical as always—no matter how excited you might be by a new project or goal.
“Today, no business can afford to remain stagnant because it could cost organizations revenue or cause market share vulnerability.”
—Stephanie Schmid, PMP
PHOTO BY CHAD KIRKLAND
At Transnet, a freight logistics company, Mr. Hadebe says he manages projects from an “incubator” perspective. “As project leaders, we must ask: What strategic initiatives will enable the organization to identify new revenue streams or create new business development?” Because these new initiatives may carry a high risk load—new technologies, new processes, new markets—“project managers must be more agile and adaptable than ever before,” he says.
That means even default project processes are falling under scrutiny. “Historically, IT environments could be frozen for a period of time during a project” to prevent rollout of other products or updates, says Stephanie Schmid, PMP, director, implementation project management office, ADP, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. “Today, no business can afford to remain stagnant because it could cost organizations revenue or cause market share vulnerability.”
And while old-school project managers might have focused on presenting updates and results to senior stakeholders, modern leaders understand their role has shifted from presenter to partner.
“A tactical project manager can be successful at driving the team to meet deadlines with quality, but a strategic project manager raises that skill set to the next level by implementing the company's vision into the team mindset,” Ms. Schmid says.
The accelerated pace of change doesn't mean less rigorous project planning, but it does require more agility. Project managers who think they can stay current on news and trends while also micromanaging every task will be in for a rude awakening.
“In today's business environment, we need different kinds of thinkers and perspectives on our teams,” Mr. Verinder says. Empowering team members with clear expectations and giving them the freedom to perform is the best way to guarantee the team delivers—but not at the expense of individual ideas and work styles.
“If they start to flounder, you can step in before things go awry,” he says. “But leaders know they shouldn't be in direct control of every aspect of every project task.”
FACING THE FUTURE
Sometimes the initiatives that require the most leadership aren't the ones that make it across the finish line—but the ones that need to be halted.
In January, a division of Alphabet (Google's parent company) announced it had shut down Project Titan, which aimed to produce solar-powered drones to provide internet access to remote areas. The project hadn't veered wildly off schedule, scope or budget, but it no longer made sense for the company when it was compared with another project in the portfolio. Project Loon is developing high-altitude balloons to provide internet access to similar places more cost-effectively. So the Titan team was disbanded and reassigned.
Pulling the plug on a project or program that's hitting its milestones without issue might seem imprudent to a tactical project practitioner. But as strategic project leaders, “we always have to take an objective view and be open and honest,” says Rosemarie Santos, PMP, senior project manager, Cubic Transportation Systems, Sydney, Australia. “Sometimes, when a project is no longer relevant and a sponsor continues to insist on it, you have to really lean into difficult conversations.”
As an example, she points to a project she worked on a few years ago to implement a merchant web payment portal at a large organization. “It was intended to be a state-of-the-art solution for retail customers,” Ms. Santos says. But the organization's vendor, hired to deliver a suite of software, hadn't started developing the product when she came on board. Though an internal point of pride, the woefully delayed project seemed to make less and less strategic sense as time went on. So she suggested that “the solution be revisited and the business case updated,” she says. After scrutinizing gaps in the proposed solution, the delay with the vendor schedule and the updated business case, internal stakeholders decided to put the project on hold.
Shrewd and strategic risk assessment isn't only about avoiding pitfalls, however. “Too often, project managers focus on risk avoidance instead of magnifying the opportunities risks present,” Ms. Schmid says. “By definition, risks include opportunities to exploit.”
But project, program and portfolio managers can't seize opportunities in a vacuum, she says. They must keep their business acumen on point, their teams empowered and their conversations with decision makers focused.
The best project leaders will strike the right balance of rigor and flexibility, Ms. Santos says. Project leaders must view the knowledge and frameworks offered in A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) as an important starting point, rather than the whole map—which these days is harder and harder to see in full. “We must be nimble enough to flex the core methodology to adapt to dynamic business conditions,” she says. PM
What's the best leadership advice you've ever received?
“Be a people developer—and don't be afraid to hire someone smarter than you. Leadership is about hiring, inspiring and mentoring the team so there's someone next in line who can lead, even in your absence.”
—Venkatraman Lakshminarayanan, PMI-ACP, PMI-RMP, PMP, associate director, projects, Cognizant Digital Business, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
“When things go sideways, don't throw the blame on your team. Defend your people in front of the other chiefs. Team members will fight for you if you fight for them.”
—Antoni Llevat, PMP, CIO, SB Group, Barcelona, Spain