Risks and leadership

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”

Setting a new PMO is a different “sort of project”. It is a standard, perhaps a little worn statement that cannot be ignored. The diversity is made by many factors; the most striking one is the nature of the stakeholders. Often their weighting their biases toward the project are not easy because of the intimate nature of their expectations and doubts. At the end of the day, they are the most important part of the outcome.

New versus old

One of the targets forming the setting of a new PMO is to make workable meaningful metrics.

The easiest part of this job is discovering new tools in order to adapt them to the new reality. The aim is about finding a winning compromise between the existing situation that needs to be amended and the new situation.

It resembles to an exodus, a migration of barbaric hordes toward the civilization. A long trip destined to failure. The main reason for this gloomy forecast is based on the assumption that the old system is irrecoverable.

People and tools

As well pointed out by Craig’s post about “management and leadership”; The dullness of management (metrics and rules) has to be skillfully integrated with the art of convincing people that the indicated target can be reached if, and only if, all participants can find a certain dose of their motivations within it; either in the trip or in the target itself. This process involves a lot of communications; this means that most of the energies are destined to listen, understand and verify which the stakeholders’ expectations are. Thereby, this process needs to be shaped for the “Iron Triangle” (where the quality is still waiting for its place).

To be successful, the “lazy manager” attitude (see blog and posts) needs a very well honed strategy. The Project mandate (Charter as per PMBook definition) will contain all the metrics for rendering the target and the value of the resources made available.

In her post Lisa DiTullio cited the famous acronym for defining leadership:

Listen

Encourage

Act

Delegate

These verbs will be tested through the association with their subjects and complements.

Listen

In this case, the PMO is the listener and the stakeholders are speaking out their minds, either directly or (sometimes time better) to the PM.

It is an art that could be based on some serious drawback. Lack of self-esteem makes wonderful listeners; their external passivity, when supported by an acute intelligence (as ability of abstracting) makes possible to collect a huge amount of information. Another pitfall is created by the spooky figure of the PMO, who would find more difficult to create the faithful relationship needed for mentoring.

Encourage

The job consists in spotting the best way to help the coachee to find and increase the value of his/her strengths. Especially in an economic downturn like this, this job shall be extremely well focused. Nevertheless, the responsibility of success needs to be shared with other specific stakeholders, like HR or the direct Manager.

Act

There are a lot of “actions” that form the leadership. Delivering what has been agreed, is the best way to lead by example. Alongside the work in the fields made by useful chats, the PMO is an active subject able to produce meaningful results. The difficulty lies in the design of a system that highlights both strengths and weaknesses with no shade of betrayal.

Delegate

This action needs two complementary subjects (we) in order to define the methods for obtaining what. Delegation is the natural result of a good listening and encouraging when it can be done in parallel with the acting. One of the tricks consists in the treat it as a small project with its charter, product description and constraints.

Conclusion

“Don’t throw the baby with the bath water”. I am amazed by how to find and retain all the necessary “best and brightest” needed for staffing projects’ teams. IT has got no money enough to compete with other industries. The myth “from the garage to the penthouse” is dead. From its demise, we should be able to deal with normal people. It is a huge challenge; however, it is unavoidable.

More reference

“How NASA Builds Teams: Mission Critical Soft Skills for Scientists, Engineers, and Project Teams

C.J. Pellerin