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.

Twitter provides a great rule of thumb for what kind of information to share with other people on a project.

Before inviting someone to a meeting or sending them an email ask yourself:

Is this information something they’d choose to “follow” on Twitter.

If yes, send it to them.

If not, or if its something you just think they “should” be following, don’t.

This will help keep meetings in check and emails in check and hopefully more aligned with the specific information each person needs to do their job (and not get bogged down in useless information).

As discussed in my recent article in ComputerWorld, this works because Context Trumps Content (as the growth of Twitter makes abundantly clear).  There is no end to the amount information people can find.  What is valuable is not the quantity of information, but the quality of information. To be high quality and valuable, the information needs to be relevant to the recipient.  (And Twitter makes it easy for people to receive only the information they find relevant to themselves.)

To move your organization forward you have to manage change.

Change can come from outside the organization, like a change in the laws or the economy. It can come from inside the organization, like a quality improvement initiative.  Or, it can come from the market.  Often, you need to proactively make changes to succeed.

These can include changing the way you do things, changing the products or services you provide or changing how you market those products.

Here is a six step guide to managing change successfully. It connects the dots from the previous two posts (with a philosophical p.s. on the importance of change and good project management).

First, a definition. At its core, change is about going from where you are to where you have to be.

1. Create a work-flow. A good work-flow gives you a picture of your current state.  Analyzing the work-flow can help you decide where you want to go. Use data on the effectiveness of the current work-flow as a baseline against which to compare your future work-flow.

2. Create what you want your future work-flow to look like.  This is your target work-flow. It should be driven by your goals. That is, figure out what it is you want to improve (customer satisfaction, profitability, job satisfaction, costs, etc.) and build a target work-flow that should deliver those improvements.

If change is being imposed from outside your organization (e.g. because of the economy) your target work-flow is about figuring out how to do what you currently do in a different, but equally effective, way.

3. Build a project plan that maps out how you are going to get from here to there. It should tell you the road you’re going to take, who’s getting you there and  how to keep moving forward when you hit road-blocks.

4. Once you get there, once the target work-flow is implemented, measure its effectiveness to see if it meets your goals. Did it improve what you wanted it to?

5. If it didn’t meet your goals, figure out what else has to change and go through the process of creating that change.

6. If it did meet your goals, find another area to improve and do it again.

It has been said that change is inevitable. All things change. Having a process in place to manage change makes it more comfortable and increases your chances of have a successful transition.

On a Philosophical Level:

Economic growth depends on change. If that’s the case, a good project manager, one that can manage change and make positive changes a reality, is an engine for economic growth.

What makes a good work flow?
A good work flow accurately captures the way things are done, it spells it out clearly for all stakeholders to see and provides information on where anything is in the process.

Why make a work flow?
To speed up the time it takes to get things done. So people always know what the next step is and what’s the hold up. To find ways to scale up or scale down with knowledge.

On a philosophical level:
A workflow captures reality and makes it easier to study and work with that reality. It expresses our belief in the wisdom of how we’re currently getting things done and a confidence that improvements will be discovered on the job.

That misspelled slip on an instant message chat says it all.

So many managers “hear to talk.”

They listen to find places they can interrupt, contradict, assert power, make a correction or effortlessly start talking on their own.

Take the time to actually listen.  So the next time you “hear to talk” you really are there.

On the Flipside

The most effective managers do the opposite.

They “talk to hear.”

Spend time asking questions and move the conversation to learn what the person talking has to say. That is the benefit of working with a team - getting each person’s unique contribution.

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.

Emotions can propel you. Emotions can bog you down.

Emotions hang on a framework of expectations.

Expectations hang on the plans we carry with us. Whether in our heads, in software or on paper.

Understand plans (and how they change over time) and you can achieve growth.

This applies to organizations and to individuals.

Good project management can be the missing piece in revenue growth.

Here is a simple test to know if project management could help you grow revenue:

How long does it take you to generate a list of all projects you’re working on?

If the answer is anything greater than 5 minutes, you could benefit from more formal project management and project management software.

A quick case study that demonstrates this point.

A client of ours targeted a division for revenue growth over the next 5 years. They allocated sales people and marketing dollars to capture the opportunity. They saw a market opportunity to grow this division significantly.

Management, though, was worried that the division wouldn’t be handle to handle the growth. They were concerned that they wouldn’t be able to fulfill all the new orders.

Why were they worried?  They asked a simple question.

They asked the head of the division to show them a list of all current projects.

The head of the division said she’d get back to them in a day or two.

That’s when red flags started to go off.

If it took the head of the division one to two days just to compile a list of what was going on, there was clearly no process in place.  They were flying by the seat of their pants. Without process, the division couldn’t scale. That’s why management was worried.

If growth came, they might get lucky at the beginning, like they have been. Key individuals and long-standing relationships could be relied on to push the work through.  But longer term, things will start to break. There are only so many items those key individuals can do. Tasks will fall through the cracks. Deadlines will be blown. Customers will be upset. And all the money spent acquiring new customers will go down the drain.

Project Management is a Foundation for Growth

Management knew they had to create a more mature and uniform process. They needed to formalize their processes into projects and implement project management software to keep things together and provide instant access to information. This initiative became part of the overall investment in revenue growth for that division, as critical as sales people and marketing dollars.

Once complete, the head of the division was able to generate a list of projects in one to two seconds, instead of one to two days.  The division was on firm footing to grow revenue.

So if you want to see if a lack of project management is holding back growth, see how long it takes to put together a list of all ongoing projects. If its anything longer than 5 minutes, you have a problem.

I had the pleasure of speaking to a group at the Shifting Gears program this morning in Auburn Hills, Michigan.

These are motivated individuals in mid-career who saw the world change around them as the auto industry in Detroit underwent its massive transition.

They are taking courses on re-learning how to compete and shine in a world of entrepreneurs, small businesses and risk takers. To use a phrase from Seth Godin’s Linchpin, they are being taught how to fight the lizard-brain.

One of the key messages I conveyed was the need to constantly be innovating. The group  has the basic skills to do this, but need to learn how to reapply those skills to generate innovation.

Most of the people in the group are engineers or worked in environments geared to engineers.  They are very accustomed to thinking about and structuring formal processes.

This is wonderful. You can create processes that generate innovation.

The problem is that most of them have been taught to build processes that eliminate costs by standardizing output.  What needs to be taught is how to develop processes that maximize innovation.

The way to generate innovation is to build processes and standards that measure output for its value to the customer.  And by value, I don’t mean providing widget x for the least money. This is what they have been doing for 20 years.  By value, I mean providing a good or service that the customer truly appreciates.

Its great programs like Shifting Gears that can help drive this re-learning in Michigan and help harness the talent that’s here.

Its also this kind of mindset shift, particularly in project management, that can foster a flurry of innovation and lead the economy forward.