I will be speaking at the November meeting of the Project Management Institute’s (PMI) Great Lakes Chapter. The topic is:

How To Achieve Economic Growth and Innovation Through Linchpin Project Management

Attendees receive a 1 PDU continuing education credit from the PMI.

Below is a description of the session. You can register at here.

Project management evangelist Mark Phillips will bring to life the new buzz-phrase “linchpin project management.” He takes the concept explained by author Seth Godin and defines it in everyday terms, recommending steps that project managers and other business leaders can take to create a culture of linchpin project  management.

Attendees of this presentation will learn the critical distinction between the view that project managers lead “operations” and the view that they lead “projects,” with the latter being preferable.

By seeing their roles as true managers of projects, the individuals in these roles maintain creativity by distinguishing themselves as being in charge of something unique, something that is bringing change and has never been done before.

Finally, Phillips will describe the innovation-driven authority that the best project managers can derive from their roles and provide tips for individuals who want to achieve this level of mastery.

Part Four of Four

I’ll wrap up this series with a discussion of power.

Without authority a project manager is stuck.  A project manager needs to exert some form of authority to implement changes and move the project forward.  This authority can be formally granted in the organization or informally obtained and built up over time.

A linchpin needs to make a difference and exert influence over their individual realm. A linchpin project manager needs to exert influence over a process and other people. They may or may not formally have that power. If they don’t, an organization can unlock a wave of innovation by empowering project managers to make changes. Giving project managers formal authority.

But sometimes, a  project manager needs to build up their own authority.  Somehow. There are many different ways of gaining authority and many different kinds of power or influence that you can wield.  This article focuses on the kind of authority a linchpin project manager can gain: innovation driven authority. Authority you build up by being innovative, creative and delivering results.

INNOVATION DRIVEN AUTHORITY
A linchpin takes advantage of those things they have control over, and makes a difference in that realm.

They may realize they have authority over something small (what some may consider small). But it is specifically in this realm that they can affect change by starting and finishing something that is unique. By doing their part differently, they can invest themselves in the project and make it remarkable.

They may have a different read on what the customer wants or a different feel for how the customer wants to be treated. Then, through their own internal strength and belief that its ok to be different, they let that approach influence how they run the project -and how they ask others to work on the project.  Of course, this is not without risk. Their approach might be “wrong.” They could be heading for disaster.

But a linchpin project manager combines the willingness to take risks with formal project management skills.  This includes having a system in place to monitor projects, see when they’re going off track and do course corrections (or kill the project if need be).  It includes identifying and managing risk.  It means knowing how to report progress to other people in the organization, your clients, so they can have an accurate read on what to expect.

The project might fail. But a linchpin project manager will have distinguished themselves by trying to make a difference, of being more than just a competent project manager. By being an innovator.

By building a track record of trying to do the remarkable, a linchpin project manager can build up their reputation and their authority. This is authority based on results and creativity. Innovation driven authority.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT IS A SOURCE OF THE REMARKABLE
Throughout the series we’ve talked about structural changes you can make in your organization to foster linchpin project management. This article talked about giving people the authority to make changes or how to gain authority through innovation.  This is no small challenge and one that even the largest companies are grappling with (see The End of Management from the Wall Street Journal).  One thing is certain, someone who is inspired to be a linchpin has a tremendous amount of creative energy waiting to be used.  If you don’t give them the room to use that energy, to exercise their abilities, they will push for the authority to do so.  And if, after pushing and pushing, they still can’t get it, they will likely try to take those energies elsewhere (or, you’ll kill that energy and lose a valuable asset).  By not creating a culture of linchpin project management you could be fostering your next competitor right in your own shop. At the very least, by keeping creativity chained up, you’ll dull that source of creativity in exchange for the average and known.

By definition, a project manager is someone who ACTIVELY applies the tools, techniques, knowledge and skills of project management to help projects achieve their requirements. The most important word here is “actively.” A project manager, in the best scenario, is an active participant in achieving results. What’s more, a great project manager really is that linchpin who is particularly focused on delivering the remarkable.

Part Three of Four

Art departments, marketing firms and creative agencies have a unique challenge when it comes to project management.   How do you distinguish between operations and projects when you do projects for a living?

Making this distinction helps you empower your project managers to be true agents of change.  This distinction gives them room to be linchpin project managers.

Picture an art department, marketing company or creative service firm. They keep the lights on by doing unique things.  Their job is to come up with new designs, new campaigns, new slogans, new websites, new whatever.  True to the definition of a project, they are unique undertakings, there are fixed deadlines and there are risks involved. But this is something they do every day. It is the day to day operations of the company.

This blurs the line between operations and projects.

In these situations, most creative firms turn to the talent to deliver the results.  And, without question, the talent is key.  But project management has a large role to play and a project manager can be a big contributor to the whole process.  The project manager can help you deliver remarkable results for your clients.

Unfortunately, what often happens though is that the project manager gets relegated to a secondary role. They become minders of the talent or administrators of the work.  They get stripped of the value they can provide.

The challenge here is to give a project manager the space and authority to manage the project. A project manager can actively contribute to the work product and, over the long term, to the work process,  to make it great.  They can be instrumental in making sure creative juices are flowing towards making the customer happy and the team efficient.

Here are some results a linchpin project manager can deliver.  A project manager can improve turnaround time on projects or increase speed to market and help create better campaigns.  They can give you information on how to keep the company profitable or how to avoid doing a ton of work for free when you’re pitching a client. Bottom line, a project manager can give you ideas on how to create better stuff than you currently are.

One great example of how they can do this is insisting on a  creative brief for every project. Instinctively most designers know that this would improve the whole process.  A project manager can make sure that the first question asked when starting a new project is “Why are we doing this?” so you can spend your time wisely,  as opposed to “ok…what’s the first task?” and hope that you deliver what the client wants.

Give it a try on one project. Let the project manager actually manage the project and the people. Let them contribute and shine. You might be surprised at the tremendous results they can achieve for you.

Part Two of Four

In the last article we introduced the concept of  Linchpin Project Management.

• Linchpin Project Management fosters linchpin project managers;
• A linchpin project manager is someone who drives change in an organization.
• A linchpin project manager needs to be willing to be a driver of change, as a person and

A linchpin project management environment

fosters remarkable change and can make

your company indispensable to your customers.

This article focuses on one factor that determines the environment for project management.

Operations or Projects?
Is the project manager working on operations or projects?

This might seem like an academic distinction, but it is fundamentally important in how the project manager sees their role in the organization and the standards to which they are held.

For example, if they manage operations, the fact that the business is still going means they are doing their job.

But if they manage projects, they are doing their job only if the company keeps improving.

Operations are things you do every day to keep the lights on, the company working and customers happy.

Projects are unique undertakings. They have a distinct start and end date. Often they are used to help move operations from status-quo to some new (and hopefully improved) state. A project means change.

A project manager is, therefore, in charge of something unique, something that is bringing change. Something that’s never been done before.

People who run operations are sometimes called project managers. This is because the operations of the company require producing distinct work- product for specific clients.

(I see this a lot in creative groups like marketing or art departments.  In fact,  the next article in this series is dedicated to project management for marketing or art departments.)

Calling an operations manager a project manager leads to confusion, accentuates the project administration role and dilutes the role a project manager can have as an instigator and facilitator of change.

Don’t get me wrong, every company needs project administrators. They are indispensable to the smooth flow of operations. But there is a difference between project managers and administrators.

Project managers are linchpins that get things done. Projects are all about change and project managers are all about making change a reality.

Bringing it back to Godin’s recommendation – to have a linchpin project manager, decide whether the role you have called “project manager” is one to oversee what it takes to keep the lights on, or if it truly is a position of change.

If it is a position of change, let the project manager ask tough questions of the stakeholders and the team, let them question why things are being done a certain way, let them hold people accountable. Then, they can be agents of the remarkable.

Stay tuned to the next article in this series for further guidelines on how to create a culture of linchpin project management.

Part One of Four

Seth Godin has built buzz with his latest book “Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?”

His message is that people need to carve a passionate role for themselves in their work, a role that employers and customers simply can’t live without.

His message resonates loudly in the world of project management.

Project managers should step up and “run” projects, actively,  rather than “administer” them, in a passive sense.  Project managers should be linchpins.

What mistakenly passes for a project manager in many organizations is an interested passenger, a project administrator, rather than a driver.

The linchpin project manager is a driver -and agent of change.

Seth Godin drew this same conclusion and  wrote about it.  In this series, I’ll recommend steps you can take to create a culture of linchpin project management.

Organizational Factors
For an employer or manager, hiring the right person is only part of the equation.

Organizational and corporate culture factors can determine how much of a linchpin a person can be. By understanding these factors employers can implement a linchpin culture for project management. By getting these factors right, an employer can not only make it easier for a linchpin to shine but also create an environment that fosters linchpin project management.

This is a culture that drives remarkable change and can make your company indispensable to your customers.

Stay tuned to the next article in this series for recommendations on how to create a culture of linchpin project management.

A good organizational chart displays and defines roles.  It defines the path of information and decision making.  It tells you who does what.

This is an important tool in developing processes and standards-based management (which is the root of managing for growth).  You can’t make a plan, much less execute it, without knowing what everyone does. The org chart is like an old fashioned program at a baseball game. It tells you who all the players are and what position they play.

An org chart helps point you in the direction of where improvements can come from. It spells out who is responsible for defining a process or work-flow for other people. And to use a thought from the linchpin world, it can show you who is doing something new and unique, or on their own.

This phrase exemplifies the power of exclusion.

I heard it from a successful businessman. He started many projects and companies on his own because he was shut-out from other opportunities. By keeping him out, they created their own competition.

By excluding people, you create impediments to your project’s success.  It affects driven and capable people the most (who are exactly the people you want on your team, the linchpins).

Take the time to listen to people on your team. Make people feel included.

Thomas Friedman has an inspiring article in the NY Times on a virtual start-up.  Virtual companies are nothing new in the world of software and services.  What’s new here, though, is that this company is a virtual manufacturing company.

“‘Three guys with laptops’ used to describe a Web startup,’” writes Chris Anderson from Wired Magazine (as cited by Friedman). “Now it describes a hardware company, too” thanks to “the availability of common platforms, easy-to-use tools, Web-based collaboration, and Internet distribution. … Global supply chains have become scale-free, able to serve the small as well as the large, the garage inventor and Sony.”

In the world of the virtual manufacturing company, production capacity and manufacturing flow seamlessly to the cheapest source, much like programming services have in the world of software development. Producing a widget is no longer that special. It can be done in many places at a relatively low cost. Like the name of the essay in Wired Magazine says “Atoms are the New Bits.”

And this is the kind of thing that can actually save manufacturing-based economies like Detroit.

What?

You may ask how it could possibly be a good thing that other countries or regions can produce high quality goods at cheaper prices and that companies can by from them so easily. How is that good for Detroit?

In a word: Value.

You have to look at where the value is.  Where wealth is created, where the unique advantages is.  It isn’t any longer in producing run of the mill goods.  The value is in creating a really great product.

Virtual manufacturing means that a clever innovator with a good idea can experiment with a new product and produce that product for a lot less money than it used to take. Engineers and product managers can get a new ventures off the ground with much less capital and much faster than ever before. It means that the amount of risk involved in manufacturing is less than its ever been.

It means its easier than ever to create a valuable product. It is easier than ever to create a product that is truly remarkable.

All of that is great news for Detroit.

It used to be that only software and service businesses were cheap and easy to get off the ground.  From the 1970’s on the remarkable breakthroughs were in software or innovative financial products.  That helped create the success stories of Silicon Valley, Seattle and Wall Street.

The cost of getting a manufactured product off the ground was high. It made it risky to invest in or to quit the day job, as it were, to give it a try.

But now, that has all changed.  And that plays into the strength of the people in Detroit.

As the article states, this can be a huge engine for growth in the United States.

Invented and financed in the West, further developed and tested in the East and rolled out in both markets.

Inventing and managing the lifecycle of a manufactured product is right up Detroit’s alley.  And not just Silicon Alley. I’m talking about the straight, old-fashioned grease covered alley of Detroit’s past. The alley filled with mechanics, backyard tinkerers and engineers.

If mechanics, engineers and tinkerers can dream it up, it can now become a reality. And if there’s one thing we have lot of in Detroit -its mechanics, engineers and tinkerers.

It is up to them, and to each one of us, to help make it a reality.

Planning is a critical component to being a successful innovator.

It sounds counter-intuitive.

You might think that innovation is all about inspiration and the eureka moment. But its not. Its about executing.  To paraphrase Seth Godin, real innovators ship. That is, real innovators get things done.  And often.  The more often you deliver something, the better you’ll become at delivering more in the future.  Your ability to innovate and implement real change will increase.

The problem with relying on inspiration is that it is often fueled by emotion alone. Soon, those emotions fade. Or, they become harder to generate as problems arise. Then you get stuck.

If everything is on the fly, you are always late.

You can never execute and ship as fast as your ideas come.  Rely on inspiration and you’ll get frustrated when things take longer than “now.”

You need to build project plans. You need to plan the next steps.  That way you won’t get frustrated when things take longer than “now.”  You’ll be able to keep moving forward even when you hit set-backs.

The plan will be in place. You’ll know where to pick up from and where you want to go.

You might have to modify it. Actually, you’ll most certainly have to modify it.  But you’ll have a baseline to move forward on.

The plan doesn’t have to be elaborate. In fact, I would caution against getting too carried away. Many great ideas never became reality due to “paralysis from analysis or over-planning and under executing.

How much planning is enough?

You’ll learn over time as you see one plan be too constrictive or the other too loose, and therefore useless.  Just be conscious of the plan and gauge its success at helping you deliver.  That’s one of the advantages of having a planning. You have something to tweak and improve.

Often enough, whether you can get the idea done or is more a reflection of your plan, and not of your idea.

By consistently measuring the outcome of different plans and tweaking the plan over successive iterations, you’ll find the right plan. You’ll find the mix that allows you to innovate and ship your ideas.

Not every idea you ship will be a hit.   But by shipping, you’ll at least be in the marketplace. You will be executing and delivering innovation. You will have the satisfaction and fulfillment of seeing your ideas through to their fruition.

This, in turn, will give you confidence to try the next idea. And the next. And soon, you will have a steady process to deliver innovation.