06/07/2019
Five Habits of Highly Effective Project Managers
One of the reasons why project management skills are in high demand is because a significant percentage of projects keep failing or they fall some steps short of meeting set goals or customers’ needs. Many reasons have been adduced to this ‘seeming struggle’ among project practioners and no one can claim with absolute certainty to have the best fit solution to the problem.
Despite this, astonishing stories abound of successful project implementations and there seems to be a trait exhibited by some project managers that enable them to consistently deliver projects successfully. These are the top performing project managers.
This piece is set to examine some of the core habits a project manager must exhibit in order to constantly deliver successful projects. They are by no means exhaustive, but they represent some of my personal experiences as a project practitioner for close to two decades:
Fanatical adherence to project documentation – There is no middle ground! To succeed as a project manager, your project documentations must be complete and up to date. There are mandatory documents that must be developed and signed off according to the discipline of the profession. Regardless of the environment or the size of the project, whether you as a project manager feels those documents will be needed or not, you must ensure they are available and constantly reviewed. Incomplete and outdated documentation is one of the silent killers of projects. That’s the reason no project manager can afford to be lazy in the area of documentation. Ensure your project artifacts are up to date and constantly reviewed in line with project events and you are a major step towards successful implementation.
Avoid the ‘trap’ of brutal honesty – by all means uphold the maximum ethical standards demanded of this great professional. No compromise is allowed but do you know that every form of brutal honesty is an act of brutality? In dealing with project team members and stakeholders, a project manager needs to be circumspect in handling the issue of honesty. Do not damage a team member’s feelings, status, social standing by being brutally honest about an issue. Always look for a soft landing for an erring member that does not compromise project objective as well as the organization. That member may turn out to be your most critical resource at some point in the course of the project. Inherent in every corporate system is the ‘doctrine of forgiveness’ so always be mindful that your project ecosystem is more interested in successful implementation than applying the cane on an erring team member.
Emotional intelligence is a must – closely related to consistent delivery of successful project is your ability as a project manager to deploy EI in your daily dealings with project stakeholders. Be the ‘go to person’ I dare say, for official and unofficial issues relating to your team members. Sometimes, your authority is not as potent because you are a subject matter expert or vested with so much power through organizational hierarchies but because team members have a confidence that you will help them find a solution to any pressing problem they may be facing per time and it could be unrelated to the project at hand.
‘Manage’ the politics of project governance – be careful to understand, explore and exploit the lever of control in that your well thought out ‘governance structure’. The executive mix in that structure may not necessarily be the power brokers or biggest influencers. Do well to recognize who they are and win them over early enough and submit to your critical resource – every project environment has got its own limitations otherwise called constraints. Your ability to constantly deliver successful projects within that environment lies in you identifying where the flow of project activities often get stuck. What you do afterwards is to submit to that resource or condition and explore it to the benefit of your project. You have to catch that fish on its own terms and not by wielding any hierarchical superiority or know how. One of the most counter-productive tools available to a project manager is that word or action called ‘escalation’. If not carefully used, it can do more damage than good to your project especially in a less projectized environment.
Beware of vendor’s influence – your vendor is more interested in the next business or project than the PM’s personal good or career advancement. The vendor will do anything to remain in the good books of your superiors or business side of the organization even if that means ‘betraying’ the PM’s trust. No matter the temptation to get personal or familiar, ensure your relationship with a vendor remains strictly official but leave room to make such relationship personal after you have moved on from the organization to another department. You must watch your utterances and body language when you engage with a vendor especially when he/she is from a different culture or nationality. Too much familiarity with your project vendor can be inimical to the success of your project.
Written by
Folasele Ilori
