A Leadership Profile of American Project Managers Essay

Although the aims and demands of customers devote always been the senior highest priority for any come out manager, increasing global competition, ever h cardinalening client expectations, and the magnitude of the pictures impact on a libertines bottom line has begun to place greater emphasis on the skills necessary to masteryfully learn todays take to teams. Historically, untroubled skillful skills and knowledge of the industry would get to been the key selection criteria. It was, in many cases, simply assumed that men and women who featureed these qualities would lead the cipher to a achieverful ending.Todays complex attend surroundingss lead even greater skills at leaders than ever before. Cookie-cutter formula-based charge was probably never correct, but in todays environment it pass on inevitably lead to disaster. Performance expectations for quality, cost trenchantness, timely deli truly, and a host of other client measures argon ratcheted-up a nonch e ach(prenominal) year. In the highly matched arna in which near learns operate, be they impertinent or crucial, the requirement to produce results that exceed client expectations has fix the norm.As one and only(a)ness respondent sh ard, I have non worked on a figure in the past quintette years that was not viewed by the client as being fast track The wager are high, and getting higher. The days when cost over thrashs and delayed completion were jet are history. So are the chucks where skillful individualnel were once allowed to investigate until they got it office. With the managerial practices of outsourcing, downsizing, total quality worry and ceaseless improvement comme il faut even more prevalent in our organisational environment, it after part be expected that roll managers are experiencing increased performance pressures.Internal see managers are possibly just as vulnerable to not having their contracts re-create as external consultants and contractor s. Recent Literature Jeffrey Pinto and Om Kharbanda shed light on this problem in two journal articles published in line of descent Horizons, Lessons for an accidental profession (1995) and How to fail in bulge charge (1996). These reasons punctuate the increased need for projectmanagers. Increasingly adeptly complex products and processes, vastly trim time-to-market windows, and the need for cross-functional expertise make project attention an important and strong tool in the hands of organizations that understand its use (Pinto & Kharbanda, 1995).In their review article article, How to fail in project instruction, the authors write a stinging literary criticism of the practices that combine to produce project failures (Pinto & Kharbanda, 1996). Karen Ayas (1996) takes a broader brash to the whole write up by dint of what she describes as a project network structure. The design of the dodge should stress the synergies between organisational strategy, structure, culture and systems to allow organizations to build and boom learning capacity. The application of process anxiety view to project management was reported new-fashionedly in Harvard Business Review. The study of leading companies such(prenominal) as AT&T, Hewlett-Packard and Raychem over an eight-year time span led the author to report that, managers can benefit by applying a process management approach to their product makement process.Companies can create an aggregate contrive that allows them to assign practices to theirprojects with an estimate of needed resources managers can eliminate congestion and foresightful hours by evening out workloads (Alder, Mandelbaum, Nguyen, & Schwerer, 1996). (See also Jungen & Wowalczyk, 1995. ) Bob Lewis (Info World, 1996) sets forth the five keys that he reckons differentiate victorious projects from the others scope control regular, concrete, reasonable results periodic status meetings team buy-in to the plan and walking around.Project man agement is considered a vital tool for the performance of business process reengineering. Project management allows organizations to break things down into simple processes and assign these activities and modules to individuals. This approach helps organizations mention animated built-in dependencies among processes A multidimensional forum for enterprisewide visibility is essential and leave behind lead to significant productivity and cost savings. Project management is the organisational glue that binds together spread, high accountable teams throughout the organization. Teams will test and demand a framework to turn back their success under the tonic rules of rapidly changing intensely competitive markets. Project management provides the framework, encourages dispersed leadership and provides visibility of effort to stakeholders throughout the organization (King 1996). Clearly, project managers are being viewed as pivotal leaders in the introduction and implementation of slightly(prenominal) functional and behavioral managerial changes.Are project managers masking their roles and responsibilities in the same light as the authors of leading journal articles? What do practicing project managers believe are the critical characteristics necessary to be effective? On the other hand, what factors tote up to producing ineffective project managers? On the operational side, what do they see as the primary causes of projects that fail to meet budgetary and time constraints? What do they see as the roughly effective project management tools, and the extent to which these tools reach to the success of a project?Finally, how reigning is the leadership factor in the success of a project and what are the specific characteristics and behaviors of leaders that will have a dogmatic trance on organizational effectiveness in the next decade? The authors frame no look into that specifically addressed these questions nor reported results obtained like a s hot from project managers.Research Instrument Design The research instrument was compressed of both open-ended and forced-answer questions. In addition, the respondents were asked their agreement or valuation of several statements through the application of a traditional five-point Likert scale ranging from a high of 5 to low of 1. The complete instrument was thus pretested by 12 project managers and executives in a number of loyals. All suggestions were incorporated into the final research instrument. The research instrument was then mailed to a selected sample of snow senior-level project managers who, it was assumed, would possess a wealth of puzzle regarding the issues being studied. The authors authorized 76 usable receptions to the research instrument from the mailing of 100.The extremely high response rate was due in part to an aggressive premailing and postmailing earphone campaign. The respondents were all relatively senior project managers with a minimum of 10 years experience in projectmanagement. All of the project managers surveyed were employed in gargantuan architectural and engineering consulting companies. Research Results and Discussion What Are the Characteristics of efficient Project Managers? The following results (presented in Table 1) were obtained from an open-ended question that asked respondents to list, in rank order, the characteristic that they believed was essential for effectiveness.Possibly the to the highest degree interesting grammatical construction of the project managers responses to this question was the fact that technical competence was the third highest rated characteristic. Eight of the nine characteristics were managerial in temperament, bounceing a prefatory understanding that effectiveness is directly related to the ability of theproject manager to lead and manage more than simply possess exceptional technical skills. This conclusion is consistent with the academic literature, but is more powerful wh en drawn from open-end responses of go through practicing project managers.What Factors Contribute to Ineffectiveness Among Project Managers? In order to raise the question of effectiveness in a different light, the project managerswere then asked, via open-ended questions, the specific nature of individual(prenominal) flaws of project managers that directly contribute to ineffectiveness, as well as the organizational factors that produced the same results. The intent of these questions was to identify how both personal flaws and organizational factors contributed to producing an ineffective project manager.To a large degree the personal flaws are a reverse image of the characteristics of ffective project managers from Table 1. There seems to be a good deal of internal consistency among the respondents (see Table 2). The organizational factors that contribute to becoming an ineffectiveproject manager are equally relevant, but not surprising. Lack of upper-management commitment an d brave out is a well-documented source of project problems. Theproject management literature has addressed each of the organizational barriers to effectiveness and it is again reinforcing to discover that the responses document that practicing project managers perceptions fully sustenance the literature.The past few decades have not seen the elimination of these classic sources of organizational ineffectiveness, although their negative impact on project performance has been known for al nearly time. Resistance to change and a reactive approach to environmental uplift are signs of a firm struggling with adjusting to newfangled competitive conditions. tralatitious fortify systems are generally not well suited toproject management. conventional reward systems tend to have very little direct linkage between the performance criteria of a project and payment.With competition being very intense in just about sectors, some projects are priced and sold at dangerously thin multip liers with little opportunity to show a significantly positive return. When the realistic expectations for the project are not considered in the compensation plan, it can be expected that dis enjoyment with the compensation or reward systems are bound to be voiced. Project managers know that under vexed competitive conditions, jobs are taken to keep the staff utilized and the expected clams margin is possibly at breakeven.It is often just as difficult to manage a project with no expected profit than one with above average profit expectations. In addition, reward systems seldom reflect the nature and varying degrees of difficulty of the task and often focalize but on the final profit numbers. Failure to develop a reward system that reflects the specific nature of the project can create emf long-term conflicts. Consider how new market entry is normally achieved the firm buys a project. The firm intentionally bids a project below what established competitors minimum bid to get t he work and, hopefully, enter a new market successfully.Logic would suggest that a firm would want one of its best project managers to lead such a project to ensure success. But if the projectaffords no opportunity to earn a performance motivator based on project profitability who would volunteer to take on a known loser? In too many cases, organizational insensitivity to the negative realties created by poor organizational practices and policies are not understood or simply ignored. The result of these negative practices and policies is the eventual wear of a potentially high-quality professional staff.The lack of upper management support and commitment results in a complete breakdown of trust and respect. bingle of the sure killers of motivation is when project managers become conditioned to being addicted by their management at the first sign of client conflict. As one project manager described the situation its want discovering that your management is sitting on the client side of the table at every meeting, and that you are left alone to defend every decision. It doesnt take too many such experiences beforeproject managers modify their style of management to protect themselves.Under these conditions one is not likely to find that the project team is performing to the maximum potential. What Are the Primary Reasons That Projects Experience budgetary and Timely Completion Problems? Table 3 reports the respondents reasons for why projects run into budgetary and timing problems. The most frequent responses reflect both organizational and managerial problems. As an example, failure to utilize the toolsavailable to manage a project to completion in a timely fashion and within budget was the most frequent response. Poor leadership on the part of the projectmanager was the split second most frequently reported cause of problems. Lack of effective interorganizational communication and a lack of timely decisions and corrective action were also reported. The only external factor mentioned by the respondents was the clients failure to respond in a timely fashion. Almost everyproject manager has dealt with clients who seemed unable or unwilling to make timely decisions yet retained their expectations that the project would be completed on time and within budget.It seems that managing the client is an art that only experience can teach. This need to learn the diplomacy of client management becomes more and more important as a client-oriented strategy is recognized as essential to survival. What Are the Project Management Tools Most Often Used and How trenchant Are They? Managing the project requires the skillful application of projectmanagement tools that are designed to see the project team complete the project on time, within budget, and to the satisfaction of the client.Table 4 reports the responses from experienced project managers regarding the extent to which they use eight recognized project management tools and the extent to w hich the tools contribute to the success of a project. As you would expect, the two highest rated tools (actually tying for first) were the project schedule and theproject budget. Irrespective of project size or complexity, these project tools were rated highest in use and first and second in terms of contribution to the success of the project.Of the eight project management tools that the respondents were asked to evaluate, none were reported to be of no value. Some of the more lucubrate tools were employ less often and consequently may have been perceive as less priceless to project success. Despite the discussion in the projectmanagement literature regarding the need to increase the degree of accuracy in the tendency of the percentage of project completion, the earned value reporting tool, was rated the to the lowest degree used and correspondingly reported to have made the least contribution to the success of a project.The top five projectmanagement tools most often report ed as used (project schedule, project budget, project cost system, project execution plan, and client communication log) were also rated as making the greatest contribution to the success of the project. Clearb more effective project managers exercise managerial discipline in the consistent application of what they have found to be the most valuable project management tools for achieving success.What Are the Other Factors That Contribute to the Success of a Project? In addition to the direct managerial actions that project managers can take through the implementation of project management tools, project managers focus on their managerial and leadership skills as controlling sources of function that contribute to the successful completion of projects. Table 5 reports the source of influence on successful completion of a project as reported by the project managers surveyed.As expected, the decision made by the client was the strongest influence, with responding to the changing client request second. The third source of influence on the successful completion of a project is the desire to excel, reflecting the strong positive personal motivation of project managers to make every project they lead a success. The decision made by the project team and the pressures from inside the project were the next highest rated sources of influence reflecting the need for the project manager to focus on the leadership of the project team.Equally interesting are the lowest rated sources of influence on the success of aproject. Respondents give little or no faith to luck or external politics as barriers to success. How Critical Is the leaders Factor to Project Success? Given the many factors that can directly or indirectly influence the success of a project, do projectmanagers believe that there is one overriding factor that contributes to whether a project will be a success or a failure? In fact, the answer is yes.When asked to weigh the percentage of success or failure of a pr oject that can be contributed directly to the pressure of either positive or negative leadership the responses were powerfully revealing (see Table 6). commanding leadership contributes almost 76% to the success of a project. Consider what this response means. Variation in projectsuccess can be contributed to the leadership displayed on the project by 76%. Equally meaningful is the second statistic negative or poor leadership contributes 67% to the failure of projects.Clearly, firms that fail to train and reinforce the need for project managers to practice positive leadership seem to run an unacceptable risk. In a recent interview with five crime presidents of major engineering consulting firms, a question was posed regarding the number of projects in the past five years that failed due to a lack of technical competence on the part of the project manager or the project team. In what was estimated by them to be more than 1,000 projects, both large and small, the executives could s eparate only 10 failures due to lack of technical competence.Yet, when you ask most company executives what the most critical criteria for promotion to project manager is, technical competence generally leads the list of responses. Possibly what is absent is the recognition that technical competence must be supported by persons who are resourceful of managing a project and providing positive leadership to the team. All the evidence of recent research supports the idea that successful projects are led by individuals who possess a blend of technical and management knowledge, but beyond both, leadership skills.Sensitivity to the clients needs, the composition of the project team, the strategic immensity of the project to the firm, and the technical requirements of the project reflect themselves in a continuous stream of communication and personal interactions that serve to reveal the true nature of theproject manager. Project managers were asked to rate 50 characteristics or behavior s that they believed, based on their experience, would have a positive influence on organizational effectiveness in the next decade.Tables 7 and 8 highlight the highest and lowest rated characteristics and behaviors and reveal some very interesting findings. The highest rated characteristics and behaviors build a profile of an individual that most of us would wish to work for. The profile reveals a leader who recognizes that it is suddenly essential to build aproject team, reinforce positive behavior, communicate, demonstrate trust and respect, develop team members and empower them to perform and set goals succession remaining malleable to respond to the inevitable changes.Important by their absence from the golden 12 are characteristics and behaviors such as technical expertise, individualistic, effective organizational politician, or detail oriented. The profession has moved beyond the mind-set that the best-qualified individual to get up to the project managers position is t he best technical person or some flashy politically savvy character with the right contacts. Table 8 reports the characteristics and behaviors that practicing and experienced project managers rated as the 12 least important characteristics for the achievement of organizational effectiveness.Some of these responses were a surprise to the researchers while others were not. Project managers rated strategic thinker very low. This may be explained by the fact that many project managers are totally operations-oriented and become abstruse only when the job is sold. In terms of preparation for promotion into the firms executive ranks this shortcoming could be costly. Yet, this lack of recognition of the need for the practice of strategic thinking may explain the managerial practices of some firms who employ project managers.