Risk and leadership (art of delivering decisions)

By Eugenio, on August 13th, 2009

Leading is about direction

Since the leadership is classified as source of risk, it is essential to understand it and then find, if possible, a simple way for measuring its efficacy through the evaluation of results.
Merriam Webster’s definition: “capacity to lead”.
In a project environment, this should be focused on the stakeholders’ relationships. In particular to the team; when the production is carried out on the site.

The role of communication

Accepting this viewpoint, the most important, if not the only tool made available to the manager is the communication (on this subject, there is a very good post of JD).

Communication is implicit in the manager’s job nature. Whatever is the decision taken, it has been based on incoming information and then – much more important – to find the clincher for selling it, either to the team or other stakeholders.

“Know thyself“

It is one of the three phrases written on the Apollo’s temple in Delphi.
This approach can help ourselves in the process of acknowledging the drives and reasons that entered in our decision and then in the plan. Therefore, the execution of delivering it.

Living in an “illogical” world made of numbers

Whether you are Panglossian or not, our world is far from being subject to rational laws.
However, the results of our projects are measured with figures.
Leadership seems the art of understanding how it works the murky, flawed and semi-primitive nature of our own decision-making, including the heap of uncertainties. Then, using “black arts” convincing our fellows that the proposed act is matching with their personal and professional values; It therefore, will increase their well-being.

A balance between standards and innovations

There is a nice Crossderry’s post about the difference between leaders and managers.

An organization needs governance. Managers are set for checking that the rules are applied at their best. However, people who strive for growing personally and professionally can find difficult to abide to all of them, in particular when external challenges are pressing for new and better solution.

Leadership as source of risks

The previous paragraphs introduce two possible sources of risks:

Lack of ability to buy-in the required resources
Unbalanced response to the pressures, which could damage the project outcome and the company discipline and/or image in front of the customer.

These keys could suggest an indirect method for measuring the impact of a poor leadership on the project’s output.

Conclusion

Good managers come in all flavors. This matches with the multifarious nature of project’s needs.

In essence, the chances of success are strongly increased when the right group of managers (sponsors, project managers and team leaders) are able to develop an environment, whose rules can work with the global governance, that allows every stakeholder to give his/her best.

Sometimes, problems like disloyalty, kicking back etc. can be made worse – if not caused – by the lack of an environment that does not allow a proper leadership.

Managing risks is about to remove the root of possible problems. In this case, there are some actions to be planned and executed:

Being sure that everyone knows and accept the “Responsibility Assignement Matrix”
Checking that within the project’s management team there is a good “team playing spirit”
Whenever an “order” is issued, be sure of attaching a list of KPIs.

“Leadership is unlocking people’s potential to become better.”