Leadership for Project Managers

LeadershipIn the first half of the 20th century there was a belief that Scientific Management was the new way forward. Scientific Management was the herald of a new era, removing the need for skilled craftsmen, for example on Henry Ford's production lines, and making the factory owners richer. The principle was simple; reduce complicated tasks to a series of simple tasks, each task being performed by a different person. People were treated as machines and doomed to boring, repetitive tasks. But with social changes and world wars, people decided that they wanted to be treated as such, and not as spare parts for a machine, and they insisted on being given rewarding and interesting work. Many psychologists began experimenting in the area of motivation, and eventually began suggesting that there were benefits to be had from leading people, rather than pushing them and punishing them.So how do leaders differ from managers?They say that, a manager "does the thing right", and a leader "does the right thing”. They also say that, “A leader is born, not made,” but none of these statements have much to do with real leadership. Oh sure, most leaders do the right thing most of the time, but what the “right thing” is, and who gets to decide what the right thing is? And who are “they” anyway and how does one get to become one?Doing the "right thing" seems quite a simple concept, but consider for a moment that In times of battle some unlucky leaders have had to sacrifice the lives of a few to save many. If you were the husband, wife, parent or child of one of the sacrificed “few”, would you say the leader did “the right thing”? How now if you were a relative of one of the "many" that was saved? Suddenly "right" and "wrong" don't seem that simple any more.And saying that leaders are “born not made” is a cop-out. It is true that some people are born with natural leadership abilities, but everyone can improve and develop with training and practice.I believe a true leader inspires others to greatness, and they do this through their direct influence. They help others achieve what those individuals thought was impossible for them to do. A project manager who is also a leader can encourage a team to perform much better than a group of individuals can.So in many ways a leader is like a coach, someone who works with you, encourages you and gets the best out of you. It doesn't mean that a leader will never push you or never move you out of your comfort zone. Often it's the reverse; athletes for example employ a coach to do precisely that.Johnny Weissmuller, the star of the early Tarzan movies in the 1930’s and 40’s was a very powerful man. Before he acted Tarzan he was an Olympic swimmer who won five gold medals and three bronze medals in 1924 and 1928, in the 100, 400, and 800-metre freestyle relay. He also won a bronze medal as a member of the U.S. water polo team. Obviously his huge strength gave him a big advantage over his competitors; and yet not so many years later, teenage girls were breaking his records. Obviously they weren’t more powerful than Johnny – the difference was in the technique and the coaching – the leadership, if you like. If you can tap into true leadership you will cause those around you to achieve more than they think they can.When you study motivational theory, you soon come upon Douglas McGregor's "Theory X" and "Theory Y". And what these boil down to is, “You get what you expect from people.” So if we think of everyone as basically selfish then we will always try to manipulate them in order to get what we want. Hey! Doesn’t that make us selfish too? What does a leader do then? A leader expects the team to perform, and that will be communicated to them by the leader's actions. A leader encourages, leads by example, cares about the team and gives regular feedback. People need to be recognised and praised. Find a reason to praise your team members privately each week and ensure that no one misses out. But the praise itself should be spontaneous and not formulaic. I believe in encouraging everyone, not praising just for the sake of it, but everyone does something that’s worthy of praise sometimes. Communicate often with your team; give them the “big picture” and where they fit it. This helps give them a sense of team identity, and that is a good step towards integrating them into the team.A leader influences and inspires others to believe in themselves and to follow the vision of the organisation and the team. This implies strongly that a leader must know, understand and believe the vision themselves! Try to work out what has inspired you in the past, and then you can inspire others, by communicating that passion to them.Emotions are a powerful motivator, so a leader needs to be passionate to help others “feel” the vision. A leader is not driven by their ego, because if they are, then they will inspire others to follow them, instead of the vision – so a leader is a signpost for where people should go. To be a leader, you must be credible and honest, you have to “walk the talk”, because people tend to do as you do, rather than what you tell them to do.Whilst leadership is not about ego, a leader still needs to stand out from the crowd – if you’re Mr/Ms Average you’re not going to inspire many people, even if you’re good at your job. Genuineness by definition cannot be faked. A true leader has to be compassionate as well as passionate, so make to effort to develop a relationship with your staff, but with the usual provisos for appropriate relationships of course.A leader can't afford to waste time in too much time in the minutiae of the team, in fact a functioning team will solve many of it’s own problems with peer pressure etc. For example, time keeping, dress standards, interpersonal conflict and so on, but remember - peer pressure can be a good servant but a damaging and unforgiving master, so you as leader will need to keep an eye on it. A leader is expected to solve “higher level” problems such as budgetary, emergencies, compliance, need for unique expertise or when the team can’t resolve an issue. But beware of becoming the person to whom everyone brings problems or you will never find time to do your own work.Your leadership type can and should evolve with the team; following a continuum from autocratic-biased to free-rein-biased styles (analogous to development of the parent-child relationship over time).Leaders lead by example, but they also know when it is the right time to push. This is most obvious in “take charge” leaders, exemplified by the likes of Churchill, they know what to do in a crisis, and are not afraid to do it, and they can rally people to the cause – because they live the vision. A leader is expected to be a stabilising influence when times are tough, and be able to deal with any cliché that may arise. You need to evaluate your team’s current situation and assess what is needed to progress the team to a future vision. A problem with Churchillian leaders as role models is that they get dumped from office with the crises is over, and this can be true of any single-skilled leader. A true leader needs the ability to change leadership styles to suit the team and the need. They need to be able to handle peacetime as well as war.So a leader is some of the things that I have described, as well as being a manager in the traditional sense. Often as a project manager and leader you will find yourself doing the “best” thing rather than the “right” thing because you have to do all of the above and still get your project in on time and on budget. Sometimes this means “biting the bullet”, “making the hard decision”, or flogging a dead cliché. But if you follow the leadership path, rather than the strict management path, you are much more likely to earn the respect and loyalty of your team members, customers and other stakeholders along the way, and (I believe) end up with a better project overall.
From nasir mustafa
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Matrix Organizations, What Are They?

Until the 1970's, typical, large organizations tended to function in "silos", logical divisions where essentially isolated groups of workers reported to a line manager or functional manager. Imagine columns on a page with a line manager at the top of each column and a group of workers inside each column under the manager.As these groups operated autonomously, it was not unusual to find functions replicated in each silo.In an Information Technology company for example, you might find software programmers in the development area, some more in the customer support area, and yet more in the quality assurance area, because each of these functional units had a programming need.If your organisation still operates in this manner, give your boss a copy of this article.And so it was in the 1970s that attempts to improve traditional organization structures, led to the creation of the “Matrix" organizational structure.In the matrix organisation, considering our IT example above, all programmers are now in a separate programming department and report to a functional manager in charge of programming, and that manager would control almost all of their work. In a matrix we usually refer to the line manager as a functional manager because all of their workers perform similar functions.So workers in a matrix organisation are compartmentalized by their required skills into silos, like columns in a matrix, each with its dedicated manager. The workers report to and are responsible to their functional manager, who in turn usually has sole responsibility for the advancement of their workers, as well as the administration of their area, including budgeting.So far the matrix organization sounds much like the traditional organization, except that all workers within a silo (a column in the matrix) are partitioned by a particular skill-set.The other difference between traditional organisations and matrix organisations is that matrices have rows (lines running across the columns, not fights).Traditional organizations operated quite well, but they were inefficient, with lots of duplication of skills around the company. But their major weakness was when they tried to manage projects.The problem was that in the traditional organisation, the concept of a project team, which is my nature cross-functional, did not exist, because the project manager's "team" team comprised of people from different functional areas, managed and controlled by different functional managers -- not by the project manager. And this is not a recipe for successful projects.So we have our columns of functionally similar workers in each column of our matrix, with a functional manager at the head of each column.Now picture rows running across the page, with a project manager at the "head" (i.e. the left hand side) of each row. The rows intersect the columns and so intersect the columns of workers. So each row is a silo of workers of differing functionality, headed by a project manager.In such a matrix structure there is an obvious tension between the project managers at the head of each row (each project) and the managers at the head of each column (each functional area) as they are sharing the same workers, and as each manager (project and functional) has a job to do, we have a conflict of interest.There are different types of matrix organization, designed to balance the power struggle-struggle between the managers conflicting needs. The main types are listed below.The Weak MatrixThis type of organizational structure is a bit of a nightmare for Project Managers because they are effectively reduced to being project facilitators. They make plans and monitor the execution, but they have no real authority over staff, and are almost totally reliant upon the functional managers to provide resources.The workers have little loyalty to the project managers (or the project), because it is the functional managers who decide the advancement of the workers within the organization. And the workers' performance is usually measured only on the work that they do for their functional manager -- not on their project work -- so in fact working on a project may be seen by the worker as undesirable as they will have less time to do their regular work, so the project manager may find them unmotivated.And as the PM has no real authority over the team members, then they often have to report the problem of workers not performing, to the functional managers in the hope that they will encourage the workers to work more on the project.But remember that the functional managers are primarily responsible for the performance of their own functional areas, so their workers performing project tasks can actually reduce the productivity of their area (often projects are ignored in the benchmarks). So this leads to a clear conflict of interest between the PM, the functional managers and the various workers.In this situation the PM usually loses -- and that’s the easy to remember it -- the PM is weak in a weak matrix. The Strong MatrixAll these problems led to the creation of the “strong matrix” organization In the strong matrix the tables are turned, it is the project managers that have responsibility for the workers, not the line managers. But the PMs are not responsible for the human resource administration.This empowers the project managers to manage the workers directly, and thus properly manage the whole project, but without tying the PMs up in HR administration.I have worked in organizations like this, where I managed my teams and was responsible for everything except the HR functions, and I found it a very satisfying environment from a project point of view. So my teams would have me as project manager and I had sole authority and responsibility to direct their work, but they also had staff managers who looked after anything that was not project-related, i.e. performance reviews (but I provided the key input to these) training, vacation administration, employment contracts etc. And this meant that I could focus on the projects. So when a project manager starts a new project, they discuss their staffing requirement with the functional managers and the functional managers try to make the resources available (and provide training fro them, where necessary). Usually the functional managers will draw up plans and charts (e.g. Gantt charts) of how “their people” will fit inside projects, and they might move staff between projects and project managers as required (after consulting with the project managers).Effectively the PM and the functional managers work together, but overall control of everything project-related is the function of the project manager -- so in a strong matrix, the project manager is the stronger party. The Balanced MatrixThere is an old saying, “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. In each type of matrix organization there is a struggle for power, and so there needs to be some way to bring this into balance, otherwise one group will dominate the other, to the detriment of the project, and ultimately to the detriment of the organization as a whole (although individual projects or functional areas may blossom for a while). A very dominant project manager for example may bully the functional managers into always giving them the best team members for their projects. One way of reducing the problem is to make rules within the organization that varies who can manage a worker, depending upon certain circumstances. For example there could be a rule that says if an worker is to work on a project for less than one week then the functional manager (or project manager) has sole control over the worker, but if the requirement is for more than one week, control changes hands.Or there may be rules that the same worker can’t work for the same PM, on two consecutive projects.There are many possible rules that could be made of course, but the goal is to balance the power between the PM and the functional managers so that we don’t have a win/lose situation, and I’m sure you can guess that this type of organizational structure is called a “balanced matrix”. So weak, strong, or balanced, the "strength" is always from the viewpoint of the project manager.
From nasir mustafa
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Focus Beyond Success

Many people get really anxious when studying for the exams such as the PMP (Project Management Professional) or CAPM (Certified Associate in Project Management) and so their anxiety works against them. The reason that they are anxious is largely because of their fear of failure. We could say that their belief in the likelihood of their failure is stronger that their belief in their success. In order to find a way out of this mess, it helps to know a little of how the mind works.Everybody wants to be successful. Of course it could be argued that some people obviously want to fail in life – but that means that they want to be successful in failing. And so when they eventually DO fail, they succeeded in achieving their life’s main goal. And that’s a level of success that few of us achieve.When aiming for a goal, it is very important to concentrate on the successful outcomes of your task, rather than on the goal itself. For example, if you are studying for the PMP exam, you should focus on what you intend to do once you have your certification, rather than just on having letters after your name. You should concentrate on the benefits after the goal is achieved, because your energy ends where you have your focus (I’ll come back to this later).For example, suppose you are playing soccer and you have to take a penalty kick.If you concentrate really hard on taking the kick, you will become anxious and may kick the ball badly.The trick is to imagine that you have just scored the winning goal. Imagine the crowd cheering -- actually hear them in your mind -- and hear them calling your name. Imagine how good the success feels, and how proud of yourself you feel. Imagine the other soccer players running up to you and hugging you and congratulating you.If you do this, then you will relax and actually score the goal.Because if you can truly make your mind believe that you can truly make something happen, then your mind will do all that it can to make it happen (this is explained by “expectancy theory”).So if you say to someone “study hard, and try hard to pass the exam,” that is a waste of time because they are already doing that, and concentrating more on the problems will make them anxious and doubt their abilities.It is much better to get them to focus beyond the end result. Tell them to think about how good they will feel when they pass the PMP exam. And how good it will feel, pinning on the little gold badge.Tell them to imagine how wonderful and proud they will feel the first day they step back into their place of work as a PMP, to give the good news to their boss.Tell them to imagine that they’re being interviewed in the future by a reporter from a big magazine, because the magazine wants to print a feature article on their successes.Tell them to imagine how good it feels to be so successful in life.Once they believe that, it will start to happen.Your energy ends where you have your focusNow, coming back to this statement. It sounds “New age”, but it’s not. A long time ago I practiced karate for a while. This is a very relaxing sport, which seems to be largely concerned with smashing things. I was trying to break wooden planks, but with no success.My understanding of the “formula” was:Strength + technique + tough hands = (whatever you like/don’t like) smashed to bits.I had the strength and the tough hands; in fact I could hit the plank repeatedly without hurting myself too much, and the technique appeared to be right too.But then, as a result of some research, I started really believing that I could break the plank.So now my formula became:Strength + belief + technique + tough hands = (whatever you like/don’t like) smashed to bits.So I focused and my mental and physical energy on a single point on the plank (and pictured it breaking) then hit it really hard. But I still couldn’t break it.Then some time later I met a really sweet girl, who had an incredible knack for smashing things, let me into her secret.She said, “Your problem is that you are focusing on the plank, but that’s were your energy ENDS, because your energy ends where you have your focus. If you want to break the plank, you have to focus on a spot 6 inches BEHIND the plank.”So once my focus (or goal) was to reach a spot behind the plank, my energy ended 6 inches behind the plank, rather than on it’s surface. I would like to say that I was able to smash the plank on my very next attempt. That was not the case, because I was still training my mind to accept the new focus. But only a few days later I was able to smash it.And I would like to say that the girl and I developed a smashing relationship, but it was not to be, because her focus lay beyond me.
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