Learning Leader

The problem with 'Stakeholder Management' #PMOT

When project managers use the term 'stakeholder management' I often wince. I have one or two problems with the term.

First, if we mean by the word stakeholder anyone - individual or group -who has an interest in the project or its outcome, then that's fine. Stakeholder has a value that can broaden our thinking about the people we should be talking with.

However, this brings with it a problem. Most projects of any significant size are going to straddle business functions, even across two or more organisations, which means breaking down traditional silos of working. The more successful of such projects we find deal with this reality by going beyond formal roles in the temporary project organisation, and engaging with these people as people.

Also by using that over-used word 'management' , we can be immediately seduced into a lie: that processing human beings with a communications plan will get the results we want. Wherever did we buy into that idea?

It comes from an extension of the historical success of Taylorian principles to production management. Frederick Taylor's ideas were undoubtedly successful in processing stuff, but when it comes to the matter of dealing with human beings with other agendas, personal histories, personalities, and power then it simply won't do.

I prefer the term 'Stakeholder Engagement'. It put us - uncomfortably perhaps - on a more equal level with our stakeholders. Among other things it demands us to have conversations with real people, conversations that take valuable time, with uncertain results.

Yet we are seeing higher performers being biased to this sort of activity, and surprisingly seems to be a central part in their getting greater performance on their projects. It seems that when we dare to speak with people things go smoother. Who would have thought it? (I'm allowing myself to be a little ironic here.)

Most people (our stakeholders) will tend to respond positively if we give them the dignity of talking with them, not communicating at them, of feeling their pain, of taking the trouble to understand their position and how we might help. As Stephen Covey says in his '7 Habits', "Seek first to understand, and then to be understood."

We feel we don't have time for this, such is the urgency of our project. Well, research shows that we can't afford not to do it. Talking with stakeholders usually saves time, removes impediments to progress, and the momentum on such projects can sometimes exceed all expectations.

I'll be sharing some our findings on this next week at the BCS PROMS-G Spring School in London, on Tuesday evening.

So try and think stakeholder engagement, prioritise your time accordingly.

 

 

What's your frame? #PMOT

When you look at this picture, what do you see?

Some see one thing, others another. If you've seen this picture before you will probably have had it 'explained' so that you can shift between seeing one image and another. [Some people see a young woman looking away; others see an old hag looking down. Look at the almost-horizontal line at the bottom: it's the collar-band of the young woman and the mouth of the hag. Got it?... OK]

Gestalt psychology demonstrates with images such as this that the human brain makes sense of reality more by interpreting whole patterns than individual elements. This has a consequence: we tend to focus on certain matters in the foreground of our consciousness whilst filtering out a lot of other detail, detail that doesn't fit the structure, putting it into the background. In this way, we are told, we all approach reality with our own frames of reference.

Our own research tends to confirm, for example, that not all project managers have the same frame of reference. Some see data, see evidence, see indicators that others simply do not see.

But this is not merely a matter or personality or taste. Our frames of reference matter. It seems that some of us have been ignorant of some quite important data.The data our brains choose to make sense of seems matter to our performance. We began to see a clear frame of reference for the few high performing project managers that is different from the rest.

And that data is largely in the area of people and relationships, of stakeholders and communication. For all too many project managers, people, relationships and conversation are all just a distraction; such things just slow them down. And yet the evidence is there: higher performers have a relational bias: a bias to making time for people and relationships.

So when you look at your project work priorities today, what do you see?

Social Media in Change

First, let me admit it. I'm a great fan of social media. I'm interested in how it works, and how it can be applied to business.

I've blogged for a number of years now; I was an early adopter. I subscribe to blogs, and their posts continue to inform and educate me. I tweet. @PatrickMayfield has a steadily growing number of followers. LinkedIn has an increasing richness for me in business. I've set up resource pages on Squidoo for clients who have taken particular training and consultancy from us. And recently I recanted and joined Facebook, and we've set up a company Facebook page. It seems I now swim in a sea of social media... and I love it.

So would you expect me to advocate this in the area of transformational change, of harnessing these technologies in programmes and projects? Do I urge Facebook as a collaborative medium for projects?

Not immediately. 

My current view is to tread cautiously. It seems to me that the main challenge for most project managers and change leaders is to engage in real relationships across former silos of working. This is best done face-to-face. Where social media can add value is just that: adding value, not replacing the necessary shift to traditional expressions of human relationships.

What can happen with task-oriented people is that their enthusiasm for tools takes over, the tool becomes an end in itself, and real relationships get neglected.

So first I'd advocate simply talking face-to-face with people more.

Inside the Minds of Star Project Managers

I'm presenting the current state of our research at the Oxford Branch of APM tonight at 6:30. Here's a copy of my presentation:

As you will see the presentation above does not fit this blog's page layout, so instead, click here: Mental Crib Sheet of Project & Programme Managers on Prezi

This Blog is almost famous ...

... well not really,but here is something that made me smile this morning:

Fixer-Upper Blog, run by Nicole Adams, published the Top 100 Project Management Blogs, and I come in at a respectable 18th (2nd in 'Top Speciality Project Manager Blogs'). For a Brit like me that is like winning!

'Thrashing' in a project

The ever- stimulating and prolific Seth Godin is publishing a rich vein of material at the moment, not least his new book, Linchpin. Alongside this is a fascinating video about focusing on finishing, 'shipping', rather than creativity.

As someone who was found describing myself a few days ago on the Change Management course I led as "not a completer-finisher" and glorying in it, this presentation certainly has me challenged!

'Thrashing' is the 11th hour changes that people load into a project as they realise time is running out, thus ensuring that the project misses its time and quality targets. Godin quotes two simple rules from 37 Signals:

1. When time runs out, ship.
2. When money runs out, ship.

The Psychic Noise of Risk

or

... how I stopped worrying and learned to love risk management ...

As regular readers of the blog will know, I am an admirer of David Allen's work, particularly his Getting Things Done book. 

Mr Allen takes a lists-based approach to personal management. I was introduced to mind mapping first, so I was a little snooty about lists, regarding them as a fairly primitive form of making notes. However, I now realise that's silly: mind maps themselves can be radial lists.

However, one phrase gripped me in David Allen's approach where he describes all the uncaptured things we need to do seem to swim around in our heads as "psychic noise", distracting us from being able to focus upon the matter in hand, or what is most important at any given time. "Yes," I thought, "this noise needs to get out of my head and onto paper so that I can have confidence that I will come back to it at a later, more appropriate time." Thus with the item 'parked' on an appropriate list or mind map, I can then focus on the immediate matter in hand.

Continuing the theme in my last post, risk, there is a similar dynamic when it comes to the value of identifying risk. Whatever we may be planning, there will be uncertain threats and opportunities. Simply naming these and working out appropriate responses become enormously 'uncluttering' mentally, as we go about our business planning.

OGC have now built this into their best management practice in projects (PRINCE2), programmes (MSP) and at all levels of the business (M_o_R). It is now standard practice in every business case to list the major risks and factor in the costs of sensible responses to them.

As I practice this more myself in pearcemayfield, I can say this works. I notice that the 'psychic noise' in my head is reducing.

Go configure! #PRINCE2

Yesterday I was briefing an audience of project managers on the recent changes in the PRINCE2 Refresh. I was at pains to stress the sleekness of the new version, how it had been stripped down, how the number of processes has been reduced from 8 to 7, and so on.

Then I went too far. At least for one member of the audience. I said that the Components (now called 'Governance Themes') had also been reduced to 7 by losing the chapter on Configuration Management.

It was then that I spotted this gentlemen, visibly discomforted by this. I'd left him with the impression that PRINCE2 no longer advocated care and control over a project's growing assets (aka 'Configuration Management'). I immediately attempted to correct this misunderstanding; PRINCE2 now treated this topic within the Change Chapter (formerly 'Change Control').

This didn't satisfy him. For this gentleman configuration management was a vital part of best practice project management and therefore deserves the visibility of its own chapter in any project management method. Indeed, the original PRINCE method (1989-1996) has its very own volume, albeit a thin one!

Well, I agreed with his concern, but only up to a point. However, I disagreed with his conclusion about visibility. When we understand what configuration management is - a clear versioning and control of all assets, combined sets of assets, control over the assembly of components into a coherent configuration, being able to manage stable releases, to track back, and to be able to roll back to previous configuration states - when we understand all this, then my point is: surely this is a general management discipline, and is not particular to projects. For example, delegation is an absolutely crucial management discipline in applying PRINCE2 well; yet it doesn't merit its own chapter in a book about how to manage projects well. This is immediately obvious because delegation is a generic management skill, not the exclusive preserve of project managers. So it is with configuration management.

So should project teams practise good configuration management in the volatile world of fast-moving projects? Of course they should. But then this is a normal discipline of business.

How Refreshing! PRINCE2 has a makeover

Yesterday the first batch of the new edition of the PRINCE2 Manual arrived at the office. As one of the authors, my colleague John's name appears in justifiable glory a few pages in.

Its gratifying to see that the refreshed edition has followed the design approach of MSP, such as there is now an earlier chapter on the Principles of PRINCE2 project management. John and I will be working through the implications of this with the folk who have booked onto our seminar at the Best Practice Showcase later this month.

There are only seven principles (as with MSP). In the case of PRINCE2 they are:

Continued business justification
Learn from experience
Defined roles and responsibilities
Manage by stages
Manage by exception
Focus on products
Tailor to suit the project environment

To paraphrase Rudyard Kipling, "If you can do all those then you are a PRINCE2 Project Manager, my son."

The new PRINCE2 book is a slightly different shape and size to its predecessor. The 'old' edition was some 457 pages. This new edition is a slimmed down 327. This has been achieved largely by ditching the so-called 'sub-processes' in the process model. I understand that some of the PRINCE2 examiners are weeping and gnashing their teeth. Well, the rest of the project management community is rejoicing. I never understood the concept of 'sub-process' anyway: either it is a process or it isn't.

Tailoring is now normal. It always was, but this edition makes the point in visible, emphatic, unavoidable terms.

Already press releases by various pundits are getting some points more or less wrong about the new edition. It is not a revolutionary new departure; it is not PRINCE3; it is not even 'PRINCE2:2009.' It is simply the 2009 Edition of PRINCE2.

Nor, as I have read, are the Principles optional. If some of these eager commentators bothered to read the book it clearly says:

"It is the adoption of these principles that characterizes whether a project is using PRINCE2, not the adoption of processes and documents alone. The principles facilitate good use of PRINCE2 by ensuring that the method is not applied in an overly prescriptive way or in name only,but applied in a way that is sufficient to contribute to the success of the project." (Page 11)

Sane words indeed, which will be cheered by every common sense practitioner.

So please, don't let the dogmatists tell you otherwise. Beware of geeks swearing rifts.

Finally, with the help of some of our key clients, we are running a series of free breakfast briefings around the UK from mid-July to mid-August. Running from about 8am, for a couple of hours you can have the chance to ask John about what's different in this new edition over breakfast, and see how it will promote the best management practice of projects. We will be running these briefings at:

    The University of Leicester (14th July)
    The British Council, Whitehall, London (16th July)
    The University of Cardiff (21st July)
    Imperial College, London (28th July)
    Oxford University Press, (mid-August - date to be confirmed)

Call (01235 227252) or email our office to book your free place before places run out. And when you do come, please introduce yourself; it would be good to meet you.

My Said Business School Seminar on OGC's Programme Management Guidance

I mentioned last October that I was speaking at Said Business School, Oxford as part of their BT Centre for Major Programme's series on Complexity and Escalation. I decided that I couldn't be 'academic' but I had simply to tell the story of my involvement. This I did, and Iit seemed to be well received.

If you are interested I see that my slides and an MP3 (caution - the sound quality is not great) are available on the Centre's site for download.

Business Change Manager, leading transition, programme management, project management, transition