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Supervising Projects You Don't Understand - Do Your Major Projects Receive the Leadership They Need?
Abstract
This study addresses the dilemmas and challenges facing senior executives who serve on steering committees or other supervising bodies of large and strategically important initiatives. They ultimately bear responsibility, but they are not in a position that allows them to understand all the details of what is going on. They do not have the time, they are distant from the actual work processes, and, after all, executives cannot be experts on everything. These initiatives are often cross-functional, involve breaking new ground, and bring together areas outside of executives’ normal expertise. Furthermore, since this these initiatives are temporary, normally in the form of a project, executives cannot rely on learning over time or draw upon established corporate practices. In this situation, how can executives provide the guidance and supervision these initiatives need? How can they avoid abdicating responsibility and becoming spectators to a project run by experts? The management profession has a solid understanding of what project managers and their teams should do. But we do not well understand the challenge for the steering committee that supervises the project managers. The added difficulty comes from organizational distance: hidden information, multiple areas of expertise, non-aligned interests, and other changing circumstances. Some projects fail not because of project management itself, but because of failure of the supervisors to provide the necessary senior leadership and governance to the project. Thus, project supervision has a very important effect on project success. But supervising a temporary, one-off strategic initiative that enters new territory is very different from managing an ongoing business. When the setting is temporary, and separate from your regular executive role, how deeply should you delve into the project? How do you set targets, evaluate progress, align the initiative with the organization, and evaluate the people? Based on interviews with 17 senior managers in three countries (Sweden, Germany and France), plus five investor-board members of start-ups in Shanghai, we make recommendations to senior managers on the composition of a good steering committee and how it should conduct itself. We find that the two dominant challenges of large projects are uncertainty as well as goal agreement among stakeholders. We discover strategies for shaping the steering committee, understanding the project, setting targets and measuring progress, getting the right information from the project, responding to surprises (which always happen in large projects), and for motivating and evaluating the people.
... Because the expectations were established up front, both actors clearly understood each other's perspective, facilitating a trust-based relationship up front. "Develop a relationship and rapport before problems arise, not only when the milk is spilled" (Loch, Mahring, & Sommer, 2011). ...
Program management is the art of creating success in a complex and ever changing environment. It is fueled on knowledge work. Trust and the relationships are the foundational enablers that must be actively managed and nurtured. The Department of Defense Acquisition System is vast and as with any large system, it contains a multitude of issues. This examination focuses on program management challenges faced by the Government Program Manager and their Defense Contractor counterpart, and how each introduce trust-based relationship barriers and enablers impacting an actor's ability to establish trust and a relationship. This inspection explores trust-based relationship barriers and enablers derived from five different bodies of knowledge. First, I establish a barrier and enabler baseline based on my own professional experience. Second, I capture literature research and theory based barriers and enablers, which provide a diverse and rich understanding of trust and relationships. Third, I conduct a process research study of two major programs and inspect readily available and secondary information to determine trust patterns, common themes, and unique perspectives. Fourth, I survey Acquisition Professionals to determine trust-based relationship barriers and enablers at the Executive, PM-to-PM, and Program Level. Concluding, I interview Acquisition Professionals to garner a deeper understanding of the Department of Defense Acquisition System. Throughout each body of knowledge, I compare barriers and enablers to identify common themes, which produces the basis for each recommendation. Recommendations are focused on improving a PM's skills and the environment in which he or she operates. Actors within the DoD Acquisition System are trained on process routines but are not adequately trained on enablers such as leadership and communication, which build a capability to intelligently execute the routine. Intelligent application of the process routine introduces program management flexibility and trust. This in turn allows an actor to leverage the process to build trust and success system wide. Without actors, trust, and relationships, the process will never produce 'art of the possible' results.
This book examines the impact of CEOs on firm performance and focuses on their role in science-based innovation to answer the question, is it possible to lead highly complex R&D projects and innovation that you do not understand? Today, science and technology move so fast that even managers of R&D teams can become quickly disconnected from new developments. Similarly, business leaders may be required to lead organisations with technical knowledge beyond their own expertise. How to manage teams and retain respect and influence is a recognised challenge. Filled with insight from managers and CEOs in science and technology organisations, the book unlocks the skills required to balance the leadership and managerial needs of the organisation, motivate the technical teams and drive successful innovation in new product development environments. Due to the vital role played by experts in a chosen field of technical and scientific expertise, the book also describes what these specialists need and expect from their leaders. The book is required reading for managers in high tech and scientific environments - the CEO, CSO and the R&D manager. It can also be used as a classroom reference book on the management skills required for leading high-tech projects.
This paper describes a process used to determine critical success factors that are felt to be predictive of successful project management. Full time managers who have had experience with projects were used to generate critical success factors that they felt to be crucial to successful project implementation. Ten factors were discovered that relate well to previous theoretical formulations in the literature. In addition, these ten factors have been linked together in an interdependent quasi-sequential framework. This research has provided the basis for developing a behavioral instrument to be used as a diagnostic for assessing the status of any project as determined by the ten factor model.
Any seasoned executive knows that information technology (IT) projects have a high failure rate. Large IT projects can become the business equivalent of what astrophysicists know as black holes, absorbing large quantities of matter and energy. Resources get sucked in, but little or nothing ever emerges. Of course, projects do not become black holes overnight. They get there one day at a time through a process known as escalating commitment to a failing course of action. Without executive intervention, these projects almost inevitably turn into black holes. This article sheds light on the insidious process through which projects that devour resources, yet fail to produce business value, are created and gradually evolve into black holes. It presents a framework that explains the creation of black hole projects as a sequence of three phases: drifting, treating symptoms, and rationalizing continuation. The framework is illustrated through two cases: EuroBank and California DMV. The article then presents recommendations to prevent escalating projects from becoming black holes and provides a means for detecting problems at an early stage.
Looks at the success factors that drive innovation -- those factors that have been discovered over the past 25 years of research into the factors that correlate most strongly with new product performance. Many of these factors were identified years ago, yet many firms still miss them -- they are still surprisingly absent in many firms' new-products and NP practices -- hence "invisible". The article also looks at why firms have failed to implement these proven & obvious practices.
Information technology (IT) projects can fail for any number of reasons and in some cases can result in considerable financial losses for the organizations that undertake them. One pattern of failure that has been observed but seldom studied is the IT project that seems to take on a life of its own, continuing to absorb valuable resources without reaching its objective. A significant number of these projects will ultimately fail, potentially weakening a firm's competitive position while siphoning off resources that could be spent developing and implementing successful systems. The escalation literature provides a promising theoretical base for explaining this type of IT failure. Using a model of escalation based on the literature, a case study of IT project escalation is discussed and analyzed. The results suggest that escalation is promoted by a combination of project, psychological, social, and organizational factors. The managerial implications of these findings are discussed along with prescriptions for how to avoid the problem of escalation.
A study was conducted of 97 projects identified as failures by the
projects' managers or parent organizations. Using the project
implementation profile, a set of managerially controllable factors is
identified as associated with project failure. The factors differed
according to three contingency variables: the precise way in which
failure was defined; the type of project, and the stage of the project
in its life cycle. Implications for project management and for future
research on failed projects are discussed. The results demonstrated
empirical justification for a multidimensional construct of project
failure, encompassing both internal efficiency and external
effectiveness aspects. The fact that the critical factors associated
with failure depended on the way in which failure is defined suggests
that it is necessary to know considerably more about how project
managers define failure (and success) and, indeed how the parent
organization makes judgments on the matter
Managing the Unknown offers a new way of looking at the problem of managing projects in novel and unknown environments. From Europe's leading business school, this book shows how to manage two fundamental approaches that, in combination, offer the possibility of coping with unforeseen influences that inevitably arise in novel projects: Trial-and-Error Learning allows for redefining the plan and the project as the project unfolds Selectionism pursues multiple, independent trials in order to pick the best one at the end Managing the Unknown offers expert guidelines to the specific project mindsets, infrastructures, and management methods required to use these project management approaches and achieve success in spite of unforeseen obstacles. This book equips readers with: Causal explanations of why unforeseeable factors in novel projects make traditional project planning and project risk management insufficient Directly applicable management tools that help managers to guide novel and high-uncertainty projects Real-world case studies of both successful and unsuccessful approaches to managing high uncertainty in novel projects.
Getting organizations going is one thing. Stopping them is another. This book examines how and why organizations become trapped in disastrous decisions. The focal point is Project Taurus, an IT venture commissioned by the London Stock Exchange and supported by numerous City Institutions. Taurus was intended to transform London's antiquated manual share settlement procedures into a state of the art electronic system that would be the envy of the world. The project collapsed after three year's intensive work and investments totalling almost L500 million. This book is an in depth study of escalation in decision making. The author has interviewed a number of people who played a key role and presents a most readable account of what actually happened. At the same time she sets the case in the broader literature of decision making. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/management/9780198289531/toc.html
Fair Process research has shown that people care not only about outcomes, but also about the process that produces these outcomes. For a decision process to be seen as fair, the people affected must have the opportunity to give input and possibly to influence the decision, and the decision process and rationale must be transparent and clear. Existing research has shown empirically that fair process enhances both employee motivation and performance in execution. However, work to date has not addressed why fair process is so often violated in practice and why, in these instances, the hoped for benefits are not pursued. This paper breaks new ground by analytically examining the subtle trade-offs involved: We develop a model of fair process in a principal agent setting, rooted in psychological preferences for autonomy and fairness. We show that indeed fair process will not always be used, and explain why the hoped for benefits may be insufficient to convince management to use fair process.
This paper develops a theory of the allocation of formal authority (the right to decide) and real authority (the effective control over decisions) within organizations, and it illustrates how a formally integrated structure can accommodate various degrees of "real" integration. Real authority is determined by the structure of information, which in turn depends on the allocation of formal authority. An increase in an agent's real authority promotes initiative but results in a loss of control for the principal. After spelling out (some of) the main determinants of the delegation of formal authority within organizations, the paper examines a number of factors that increase the subordinates' real authority in a formally integrated structure: overload, lenient rules, urgency of decision, reputation, performance measurement, and multiplicity of superiors. Finally, the amount of communication in an organization is shown to depend on the allocation of formal authority.
Information leadership roles in the innovation process
- E B Roberts
- A F Fusfeld
Roberts, E.B., A.F. Fusfeld. 1997. Information leadership roles in the innovation process, in R. Katz
(ed.), The Human Side of Managing Technological Innovation, NY: Oxford University Press, 273-295.