You are on page 1of 9

Improving Project Success Rates with Better Leadership

Get the PDF Version By Dr. Karen McGraw

4 May 2009 Factual and anecdotal evidence confirms that IT investments are inherently risky. On average, about 70% of all IT related projects fail to meet their on-time, on-budget objectives or to produce the expected business results. In one KPMG survey, 67% of the companies who participated said that their programme/project management function was in need of improvement. Why? A number of leading factors for project failure were suggested by the survey, including the "usual suspects": unreasonable project timelines, poorly defined requirements, poor scope management, and unclear project objectives. Granted, all of these factors can play a role in project success. But are they the cause or project failure, or just a symptom of some larger issue? In this article, we will discuss that the root cause for many of these common failure points is really the ability to lead projects, not just manage them.

Leadership: Missing in Action


One would think that the proliferation of certified PMPs would have increased IT project success rates. However, given the research previously cited, this does not appear to be the case. Certainly, PMPs are cognizant of the processes, techniques and tools that should be used to manage projects and have documented project management experience. We contend that certification, the PMP, is indeed important, but that it alone is not sufficient for successful project management. Having been called on to rescue and turnaround numerous IT projects, we have had the opportunity to analyse why a project gets in trouble. As we looked at several of these troubled projects we realised that there appears to be a common link: leadership is missing in action. That is, while the project manager may be focused on what needs to be done and may well know how to do it, he or she may not be acting as a project leader. While certification is a good foundation for knowing what to do, it takes true leadership to drive complex projects to successful conclusions. The PMI Body of Knowledge specifies five process groups for project management: Initiating, Planning, Executing, Controlling and Monitoring, and Closing. These five areas are consistent

with the functions of management within an organisation. Managers are responsible for planning, organising, directing, resourcing, and controlling for the purpose of achieving organisational goals. The certified project manager should be able to demonstrate competent management of the nine PMI knowledge areas: project integration, scope, time, quality, cost, human resources, communications, risks, and procurement. However, the ability to manage each of these project areas still may not produce successful project outcomes. Our experience on client sites for both government and commercial clients reveals that project leadership, not just management, is the critical differentiator. Project management without project leadership is likely to result in project failure. Certainly, it is not our intent to redefine leadership. It's already been defined as the ability to affect human behaviour to accomplish a mission or the act of influencing a people to set and achieve goals. Volumes of business and strategy texts have been written about this critical competency. Check out your local book store and you will see numerous titles identifying leadership styles, leadership characteristics, and inspirational leadership topics. Some authors or practitioners have made the point that leadership and management represent two different skill sets and that either an individual has the characteristics and skills necessary for leadership or those more appropriate for management. Others have suggested that leadership is knowing where to go and that management is all about how to actually get there. We find this dichotomy troubling and perhaps at the heart of our IT project management failure rate. Instead, we believe that not only can project managers act as leaders, but in fact that they must provide leadership if projects are to achieve results.

A Closer Look at Project Leadership


Project leadership is all about shaping a team of diverse individuals (employees and contractors, some from different organisations) into a force that produces measurable project results. At our company, we recruit and develop project managers who can provide the leadership that complex IT projects require. At a basic level, project managers must be able to set the vision, define success, and determine the measurements of success. Then they must inspire, persuade, and lead the project team. We argue that for project managers to become project leaders, they must demonstrate competence in three essential skill areas. Successful project leadership involves:
y y y

Leading courageously. Influencing others. Acting with resilience.

Leading courageously is a critical competency because large IT projects have a huge resource pool representing different organisations and job roles. These resources may see their tasks slightly differently and may not all be aligned with project goals. Furthermore, the sheer number of issues and risks may make it difficult to zero in on those tasks that are most critical. In this kind of environment, leading courageously can easily make the difference between success and failure. Leading courageously means clarifying what is important and taking a stand to resolve

important issues. It also requires driving hard on the right issues and confronting problems promptly. Finally, courageous project leadership means being decisive and challenging others to make tough choices. Influencing others is an essential competency for most projects, but especially for those with large project teams, numerous stakeholders, and different user communities. Influencing others means giving compelling reasons for ideas and suggestions and winning support from others, both within the project team and in the user and stakeholder community. It also requires the ability to negotiate persuasively and get others to take action. Finally, it means influencing the decisions of upper management, whether within your own organisation or the client organisation. Acting with resilience is critical to project leadership and is especially important when projects are at critical stages or in trouble. When a project manager acts with resilience, he or she keeps the focus on project goals and refuses to give up. Sometimes it means being tough enough, in the face of adversity, to fight the good fight and get agreement on issues that threaten to derail the project. Or it may simply require being flexible enough to negotiate solutions that keep driving for the goal of project success, when others might give up and accept defeat.

Summing It Up
In this article we've presented the case that project leadership is the differentiating factor in project success, especially on large, mission-critical projects. Knowing what to do and being able to manage the nine knowledge areas identified by PMI is not enough on complex projects. Successful project managers must lead courageously and be able to influence others to resolve some of the most critical problems that projects experience. And to paraphrase Churchill, they must never, ever give up; they must act with resilience even in the face of conflict and problems. To experience the project success that investments demand, assign project managers who can act as project leaders to your mission-critical IT projects.

Abstract Leadership and Project Success: Lessons from High Impact Government Innovations. September 2003 >Download PDF Patricia Diamond Fletcher, Ph.D. All of the innovative projects we studied were initiated by public sector leaders who shared a vision of better government. The leaders in each project were committed to developing working relationships within government and between government and private and nonprofit organizations. Commitment of top political leaders at all levels of government proved critical to sustain the initial effort and achieve a successful partnership and service delivery. Leadership also emerged within project teams made up of dedicated and skilled public servants who believed in enabling a government that is available to everyone at anytime; a government that provides quality services and meets top standards of performance.

Defining a Moving Target "Leadership is the ability to get good things done with the help of others." This seemingly simplistic common sense definition of leadership from the Kellogg Foundation has considerable merit. Implicit in it is the notion of achieving agreed upon goals, a shared sense of vision and values, the willingness to follow, the importance of communications, and the merit of teamwork. Effective public organizations and high quality leadership go hand in hand. While many leadership qualities are taken as a given, (e.g., dedication, charisma, engagement, communication), the public leader must also draw upon the tools and constraints afforded by being a part of a government. Thus, public leaders must also work within legislative and policy frameworks, the agenda of elected officials, the scrutiny of the media, and electoral and budget cycles which constrain both innovation and long-term strategy. Decision making occurs in a highly proscribed environment and decisions are enacted often with minimal to no new resources. Public leadership is often a thankless role, fraught with public scrutiny and the condemnation of the press. Environmental pressures make it difficult to exert organizational or individual control. Given these constraints, you might expect that few leaders emerge in public organizations. This is not the case. As citizens we have seen stellar examples of leadership throughout the public sector, at all levels of organization, at all levels of government, and in all branches of government. Many of these have been used countless times as exemplars of the public leader. The valiant leadership of Rudolph Giuliani as Mayor of New York after the terrorist attacks of September 11; Indianapolis Mayor Steven Goldsmiths innovative leadership in using technology to enhance public service; Lee Kuan Yew, a former Prime Minister of Singapore, and his visionary leadership which made possible the "Singapore Miracle"; the quiet heroic leadership of Jim Lovell during the fateful Apollo 13 mission to the moon; the persistent leadership of Indias Mahatma Gandhi in the struggle for self leadership of the nation. A all of these leaders are well known - and every day, other examples are enacted through public organizations, sometimes quietly, sometimes with great fanfare. Public Leaders Emerge in Innovative Partnerships Our recently completed multi-national study of new models of collaboration for delivering government services provides yet more evidence of the importance of leadership in the success of public organizations. All of the projects were initiated by public sector leaders. And much of the leadership exhibited in this research illustrates the definition above - the ability to get good things done with the help of others. What are the "good things" here? Our case studies suggested a range of goals for the government projects studied - but all of them shared a vision of better government. The leaders in each project were committed to partnerships and innovation.

To do this they engaged in new relationships within government and between government and private and nonprofit organizations. They often embraced information technology to enable a government that is available to everyone at any time; a government that provides quality services; a government that meets top standards of performance. Their commitment was demonstrated at all levels, from the President of the United States to the project team members at the Canadian Treasury Board Secretariat, to local government GIS experts.

In the FirstGov case, presidential leadership was visible from the start as then President Clinton believed in the power of the Internet to create a more accessible and useful government for citizens. Leadership was also visibly assumed by the U.S. General Services Administration whose leaders and staff worked "tirelessly" because they "knew it was right." At Ontario Business Connect, leaders believed that service delivery in general, and job creation in particular should not "be hampered by the red tape of government." In this project, the overall goal of the Ontario government was to increase citizen satisfaction with government services. In New Brunswick, the "Partners in Change" project was led from a belief in doing good things. One of the key success factors for the NB Department of Human Resources Development was an inspirational vision of enabling selfsufficiency for all of its clients. In the case of the New York State Geographic Information Coordination Program, the lack of state-level leadership was seen as an early barrier that kept New York from influencing, participating in, and benefiting from the national spatial data infrastructure. When state leadership was established to promote this common good, both the state and all its partners began to benefit from more robust and flexible data. One more example of leading with the power of the common good comes from the City of Bremen in Germany. Its Online Services project was based on voluntary participation by public agencies responding to the visible and active support of the First and Second Mayors . The Mayors made clear the economic good that would accrue to the City from the successful innovation of Bremen Online Services.

What is the value of the "help of others?" A second clear lesson from these projects is that a leader cannot be successful without the help of others who offer commitment, engagement, and belief in the goals of the project. Often these people are also leaders in these intitiatives.

At the Internal Revenue Service (U.S. Department of Treasury) one aspect of leadership that was consistently stressed was the ability of the program director to engage the staff in the job at hand. Making tax payments available online was a complex and risky business for the IRS. As a consequence, the project team had to buy into the leaders vision that this was a worthy and achievable goal.

The Service Canada initiative shows that leadership had to come from the ranks to motivate people to be committed to success. Leadership had to arise from the peer group itself to sustain the necessary cooperation for this government-wide project. At FirstGov, a number of stakeholders noted that it was the very visible leadership from the President of the United States that motivated them to work together to meet the extremely demanding goals for the creation and implementation of this portal. The CIO at the General Services Administration got the team excited and engaged in meeting the very tight and very visible project deadlines. And the effort of the team itself was also a critical success factor for this project - without the teams extraordinary commitment, the FirstGov launch would not have occurred on time or with a high level of quality.

Another way leaders engage the support and help of others is by having a top level official create oversight, advisory, or decision groups composed of project stakeholders.

This occurred in the Access Indiana case, where the Governor of Indiana created the Enhanced Data Access Review Committee, composed of top agency administrators and other key public and private stakeholders. This committee is directly involved in the workings of the program and gives Access Indiana strong and visible promotion

Who is a Successful Leader We have seen leaders emerge at all organizational levels in our case studies. First, we observed the very top level of leadership - often elected officials - who espouse a particular cause and engage others to follow.

Among the Canadian cases, many initiatives under the Connecting Canadians program have the imprimatur of the Canadian federal government. These leaders created this umbrella program in order to "make Canada the most connected country in the world." At the Partners in Change project in New Brunswick, the strong and steadfast leadership from the Premier and the Minister were "greatly appreciated and helped with getting through hard times" during the project. In the United States, President Clinton created the necessary conditions for a federal portal; Clinton announced his support of this policy in the "first ever Internet address" by a U.S. President, a highly symbolic statement of the importance of electronic government. In the City of Bremen the Mayors who represent the dominant political parties gave their personal attention to the project. In Belgium, the Hotjob project, a public employment and training service, was created by a Walloon Regional Council decree - and fit into the Wallonia governments strategic plan to modernize public services.

At the agency level, many instances of leadership emerged that proved critical to project success.

The New York State GIS project was given life by the leadership from several state agencies. Project participants averred that the early involvement of these agencies was crucial to convince other agencies to become active in this statewide coordination effort. This agency-level leadership gave the project the necessary credibility for success. The GIS project further benefited from strong leadership from its Program Director at the NYS Office for Technology. His leadership style was to promote consensus, and his willingness to do so was seen as accounting for "a large part of the success of the collaboration." At the IRS, the Commissioner for the Electronic Tax Administration was viewed by all as a superlative leader. He was willing to take risks and to be innovative, and his passionate support for this project gained the necessary operational support from a staff that was seen as neither risk taking nor innovative.

In other instances, leadership emerged from within the project team, at a peer level.

y y y y

In the Service Canada Initiative, the lines of authority were "fuzzy" and the project itself was experimental in nature. Team members had to step up to the plate, make sense of where they were headed, and then lead the way for their colleagues. The Ontario Business Connect project was successful in part due to the ability of the stakeholder team to call upon its own leadership skills and be given the necessary "room to operate" on its own merits. Lessons Learned In brief, a number of lessons for leaders and for public organizations can be learned from these cases. First, there are good leaders in government. Some are enabled by the electoral process, others from policy directives granting them authority. Others emerge to respond to the demands of a given situation, leading until the situation has been resolved satisfactorily. Second, all these types of leadership matter. We saw that without the top-level, policy support projects could not succeed. There needs to be someone in the organization at a high level who is committed to the goals of the project, someone who engenders belief in the "goodness" of the project. And when goals are not clear, or when there is considerable uncertainty about the outcome, or when the leadership at the top is not well-defined or evident, projects can be saved by the skill and commitment of team members. All these kinds of leadership are necessary, no one type is sufficient in itself. Third, leadership styles work best when they fit the nature of the project. If cooperation is a necessary ingredient for success, then leading through consensus gives the clear message that everyone will be heard. If a massive culture change is coming, a charismatic, risk-taking leader is called for. If change is inevitable but unsettling and unwanted, leaders have be both convincing and consistent in their commitment to change. When the goals are very visible to the public, leadership have to inspire and pitch in personally to get the work done. When a project embodies high risk and complexity, a

y y

y y

leader at the top of the government who supports the project is of immense value, both for symbolism and for resources.
y y

Leaders were a critical success factor in all of these innovation projects. Leaders communicated the value of the undertaking, they engendered and encouraged commitment from the working group, they negotiated the environment to get resources and build support, and handle criticism. They created the environment to get the work done. They rolled up their sleeves and did the work themselves. Each of these aspects of leadership contributed to progress, acceptance, and success.

-________________________________

Who leads your company's projects? The project manager or a technical or business lead?
In many organizations around the world, there is a constant struggle to define who really manage projects. Some traditional companies have the technical lead or the business lead manages the project, and the project manager support the lead, with project management artifacts (such as maintaining the schedule, the issues/actions/risks/decisions logs, etc.). In other projectmanagement mature organizations, the project manager is the one managing the project, while having many work streams leads report to the project manager, including technical, business, legal, procurement, etc. Here are my questions: From your own experience: 1. Which model have you seen widely applied in the companies that you have worked for? 2. What are the issues with each model? 3. What are the benefits of each model? 4. Which model do you personally lean to and why? 5. Does anyone know of any statistics as to percentage of companies applying the first or the second models? I would love if you guys answer my questions, preceding your answer with the bullet point number. If you dont have an answer, just say dont know. Thank you very much for your contribution. posted 1 month ago in Project Management | Closed

Managing Activities and Projects


A 2 day programme

In these days of project-oriented management, the systematic use of project management skills and tools such as those taught in the Managing Activities and Projects Programme can significantly improve the degree of success or profitability of a project.

Objectives By the end of the Managing Activities and Projects Programme, participants will:

y y y y y y y

Have an increased awareness of the role and scope of operations and project management Have investigated and practised project management processes and tools Recognise the organisational approaches necessary for success Be able to identify, prioritise, allocate and manage project activities Use techniques to plan and control risks and costs Understand how to collect and organise relevant information Be able to evaluate a project's success against pre-set objectives and good practice

Effective Project Management will result in:

y y y y

Projects completed on time and within budget Early recognition of problems and countermeasures taken in sufficient time The confidence of sponsors Increased ability to estimate the time to completion of projects

Method of Training This is a practical, exercise-based programme


y y y y y y

Trainer input Work-based examples Group discussion Individual and team exercises Case studies Role-play

You might also like