RNC Global Projects

We’re changing our logo soon!

Hi, you’ll see our new logo start to come through over the next few weeks.
 

You’ll no doubt ask why? why now? and why this? so here are some answers. 

1. Why?  The old logo was created for me when RNC started in 1999 (long before what we have today was a twinkle in my eye). It has served us well but I’ve felt for a long time we needed something fresher and more in keeping with the times and our story. 
2. Why now?  Increasingly RNC is achieving awareness of our brand (apart from being totally aligned with just me) and clients now ask for RNC to run their projects. This is a great achievement and we need something to represent that change. 
3. Why this? It suggests making a note of something important.  We know people don’t have to use RNC, we know people would prefer to use their own internal people – but sometimes they have a project so important it has to be right and sometimes projects get into bother and need help. Whatever the reason, we want people to think of RNC when they really need the project to succeed and for that they have to remember us. So this logo suggests – make a note – call when you need us.

 It’s a soft change and will appear progressively on letterhead, templates and forms with the transition complete within a few months.  Deadline?  no, we don’t need one, we’re project people and we love to get things finished.

 I hope you like the new look and if you want more of the story please ask.  I can talk about it all day……..

Keep smiling, yours, Diane

Projects are our business, our interest, and our passion.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT TRAINING FOR A NEW AGE

Hi,

In my last post I talked about how the job of project management has evolved into one that requires project managers to use their influencing and persuasion skills to obtain resources for their projects. And with this change comes a requirement for training to provide managers with those additional skills.

When I think about this problem I visualise two different kinds of project managers: a campaign project manager and an administrative project manager. And when I visualise the battle for resources I think of it as being like a political campaign, where the campaign project manager is like the sponsor’s chief of staff, ensuring the sponsor achieves their goal – in our case, rather than an election victory, that goal would be the acquisition of resources for a successful project. And the administrative project manager is the person who keeps score – who runs the charts, musters the resources and measures the project’s progress. The only problem I see with this way of thinking is that the administrative project manager – despite their job being as critical as any other – may resent the title “administrator” being attached to them.

Up until now it has been adequate to teach administrative project management and assess managers’ competence using paper evidence, without the project manager being exposed to actual project management scenarios. This needs to change. The demands on project managers today require a higher order of skills than those taught for administrative project management. Project management is one of the few professional disciplines that needs to weave through the organisation and develop its own connections and leverage points. A period of internship – of professional placement alongside an experienced campaign project manager – would allow new project managers to experience a variety of working cultures and practice the soft skills required to function effectively in the role. We can look to law, medicine, accounting, engineering and architecture for models of how to achieve this.

Administrative project managers and campaign project managers are not usually the same types of people. People traditionally attracted to project management have been detail orientated with a high regard for process, administration and order. They typically reject ambiguity and try to produce plans with little need for change throughout the project. These skills and attitudes are excellent when focussed on following the project and keeping the records straight but not useful in front-line negotiation roles.

 For campaign project management we need to attract and recruit people who are willing – and able – to live with ambiguity, invest time in developing relationships and communicate in a way that inspires credibility. They need to become ambassadors for the sponsor and gain the trust and cooperation of both resources and the people to whom those resources report. These tasks are difficult but they are needed, and success brings real opportunity. At the moment, these types of people end-up on a path towards senior management, entrepreneurship, or frustration in roles to which they are unsuited. We have the opportunity to open a new career path for these types of people and support it with appropriate training and education.

As the pace of change within organisations accelerates the discipline of project management needs to adapt to keep pace. As influential practitioners in our field we need to acknowledge the changing face of projects and create demand for, provide resources to and participate in, teaching new skill sets to our peers, and those who will come after us. So I put the challenge out there to educators to recognise this need and address it.

Your comments please.

Projects and programs: we don’t mess around, we just make them happen.

ARE YOU “OUTSIDE THE UNIVERSE”?

Hi,

One of the biggest takeaways I brought back from the AGMS was the concept that there are people who are ‘outside the universe’. These are usually people who choose to work long term on contracts; or employees who think it is solely their employer’s obligation to provide their development. They don’t engage with their own career; and miss the fact that the world moves on without them. They are still employed but each contract gets harder to find, their rate (both in real and perceived terms) reduces and their bewilderment increases. It’s sad to see these people grasping at diminishing opportunities; opportunities that diminish further as they try to do things the old way, relying on the approaches, skills and methods that used to work.

Thankfully, it takes just a few simple changes to come back from the ‘outside’. For a start, keep learning and keep current. Try to see things as they are, not as they should be (that’s a tough one).  Be flexible. And don’t forget, it’s important to keep up.

If you are reading this you are someone who I think keeps up, someone who adds value, someone who invests in their own career. The best thing you can ever do is to invest in your own career. I can’t say it any plainer than that.  I’ve been saying it for ages and now there is clear evidence that remuneration is closely aligned to how we keep our skills, attitudes and value current. If you need help working out your next step in maintaining currency please call me – we both want you contributing, providing value and earning as much as possible in the years ahead.

Keep smiling, Diane

Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.

DEFINING PRINCIPLES

Hi,

There’s a theme developing here – and it’s interesting (to me) that deans of the biggest management/business schools are concerned with this stuff. Interesting in a good way. 

The Dean of the Haas School of Business at Berkeley, Richard Lyons, described how they have changed their recruitment criteria at the school in recent years. They have gone from looking for the best and brightest and edgiest etc., to looking for people who: 

• question in a positive way – there has to be a better way to do it/this… and then go about suggesting/trying
• have confidence without attitude- the quietly and competently confident – a big move from the high energy, edgy, more showy people      sought in the past
• are always learning… people who may finish school but who never finish learning…. this is something I have long subscribed to
• believe and act in ways that support the belief that they have a responsibility beyond the immediate, people who can forgo immediate for  the longer term good.

He described these people as ‘Path Benders’. They don’t break things but they push. They don’t get thrown out because of poor cultural fit, but they use the edges. In my mind I see these people are being at the edge of a river. A river changes by degree and it’s the water at the edge that makes the change. 

Effective project managers are like that as well. We can work with the culture, but don’t become part of the centre of the river.

There is a lot of food for thought here.

Enjoy, Diane

Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen. 

WHY PROJECT MANAGEMENT ISN’T EASY ANYMORE

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I remember when project management was easy! Not easy to deliver the project – that has always been hard work, and will continue to be so – it was easy because the project was all you had to focus on. The project manager had inputs, deliverables, some time and a set of resources. Project management was about managing those elements to produce the desired result, or finding a solution if those resources were insufficient.

In short, in the old days we had:

•   Control over the resources on our projects
•   Projects that were locked-down early in the planning in order to facilitate clear deliverables
•   Projects that had the standing within the organisation to command resource allocation
•   Project sponsors with the power and the will to clear the path for the project
•   A clear organisational desire for the project to proceed

This model worked throughout the 1980s and 1990s and even into the early 2000s. Projects were envisaged, planned, resourced and operated outside business-as-usual activities. They were temporary organisations within the business and had clear, unambiguous interfaces with the rest of the organisation. Resources would be allocated to our projects and return back into the organisation when the project was completed.

As the projects neared completion a buzz would develop, delivery dates were anticipated, training began and the “new” thing would be introduced to the organisation and become the new business-as-usual.

Project management tools, processes and procedures – the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) as the Project Management Institute (PMI) calls it – developed against this background. From there, the PMI accreditation system evolved to demonstrate a candidate’s ability to operate in that sort of environment. Candidates would document inputs and outputs and record their hours operating an appropriate process to convert those inputs into outputs.

But times have changed.

During the last decade there has been a shift in the organisations we work for. I suspect this comes from the pressure on organisations to be leaner and to account more for every cent spent, meaning that there are no longer resources available to pull onto projects without impacting elsewhere. It also reflects the pace of technological change which requires the organisations to make more changes than ever before, and faster. This means that there are more projects running. They often have a wider scope than before – touching more of the organisation – and are not as clearly defined as they used to be, either because of fast-tracking (designing the deliverables as the project progresses) or ignorance about the technology making it difficult to properly scope the project because the project’s first deliverable is an understanding of the technology. The result is that organisations try to concurrently use the same resources to deliver business as usual and projects. People very often are working on two or more things at the same time.

So now, the people who used to be available to work on projects are already deployed. They have day jobs. And projects no longer stand-alone, but are tasks that must be achieved alongside business-as-usual and using the same resources.

Now, project managers:

• Do not have control over the resources for the project
• Need to negotiate for resources when they are required
• Must be able to estimate project time based on partial involvement of resources
• Understand that their resources are working on a number of different tasks at the same time
• Must manage a project knowing that it has the same, or lower, standing than other business activities
• Must work to a scope that is likely to change through the life of the project
• Are still expected to deliver clear, unambiguous certainty about outcomes and delivery
• Cannot rely on sponsors as they may not be empowered, may be ambivalent about their role and may have external reasons for wanting the project to under-perform – leading to them not fighting for the project manager

This means that the project manager has evolved from someone who manages a simple equation of inputs, deliverables, resources and time to an entrepreneurial politician who must negotiate with the organisation about each element of that equation.

This has been acknowledged by the PMBOK, which now includes a tenth area of knowledge called stakeholder management. I have also acknowledged it in my own practice by choosing to only work with project managers who have a very flexible approach to the tracking, recording and ordering role (scheduling, tracking, reporting, etc) and who are also skilled at the campaign side of project management – influencing across all levels of the organisation to get people to willingly, and at the right time, do what the project requires to move it towards success.

Unfortunately very few project managers are highly skilled at the campaign side of project management. This is due to a selection bias, in the past, favouring project managers who were good at tracking, recording and ordering; and training that has not yet evolved to teach the campaign side of project management.

I have some ideas about this which I will outline in my next post. Until then, please comment on what you have observed, or what you think the solution may be.

Projects and programs: we don’t mess around, we just make them happen.

WHOSE RESPONSIBILITY IS IT?

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Good morning, another beautiful morning here in Sydney and I hope you’ve had a good weekend.
Over the weekend, my mind was vexed by a question.  I put it to an AICD Group and it has generated some interesting comments, so I thought I’d ask you and see if you have any input.  To my mind it’s a big question, sometimes asked over coffee when no one is listening and rarely with a clear answer. And so…

This is one of those uncomfortable questions.  Uncomfortable because most people share a sense of what is right and yet…
The question?
If you report to an executive who reports to the board, and you know the information you are providing is being sanitised what do you do?
Nothing – you report to the executive and that’s where your responsibility ends? Answer questions put to you by the board honestly? Or in line with the sanitised report? It’s a minefield and it seems the prevailing wisdom is “don’t rock the boat”. Thoughts?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts, seeing if there is any consensus and perhaps even publishing an answer.

Oh, and this Friday there is a Blue Moon – so perhaps it’s time to do something that only happens once in a B……………….

Have a great week, call if you need me, best, Diane

Portfolios Programs Projects – simply making them happen 

POWER… INFLUENCE… GAUTREY

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‘Power’ and ‘Influence’ are two words you will constantly hear if you are seeking to find the path to successful corporate leadership. They’re not lightweight terms, as the timeline of human history has shown. So, learning how to properly use power and influence is most likely to be one of the keys to finding the right path to success.
I’ve been interested to read about the world recognised Colin Gautrey and The Gautrey Group via their website. With a huge portfolio and wide reaching expertise they aim to provide the appropriate skills and training to people in all levels of the corporate workplace to help them achieve optimum, yet balanced levels of influence and, hopefully, genuine success in their chosen field. And that’s an achievement nearly all of us in the corporate arena, at some point, has found to be a challenge, perhaps especially in recent times.

Click here to browse The Gautrey Group’s website…

Portfolios Programs Projects – simply making them happen

LEARN FROM YOUR FEEDBACK

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I love it when people send in feedback and yes, I am reading it all. The feedback I received below came from a client who was commenting on their PMO (not an RNC PMO).
Some of the things they observe and find frustrating:

• Making procedures which form a sort of unimaginative straight jacket within which tasks must be performed
• Interfering with the process instead of just looking at the results
• Thinking that only the way in which they want it done is the right way
• Not trusting that it will work out all right.  If they can’t leave the PM to do the job then either the PM or the PMO should go.

You may or (hopefully) may not recognise some of these characteristics. At any rate, this type of feedback serve as a handy wake up call… perhaps it should encourage all of us to remember to look constantly for better ways to work with our clients. What are your thoughts?

Enjoy your day, Diane

Portfolios Programs Projects – simply making them happen

FICAP’s WANNABE ROCKSTARS – WE THANK YOU!

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There were so many reasons for us to be thrilled, proud and feeling just great last Wednesday night. It was a privilege to take part in FICAP’s annual “Who Wants To Be A Rockstar” event as a platinum sponsor, but we were also very proud to see our own fantastic Ray Trevisan up there on the stage. Thank you Ray!

Thank you to everyone who came along to support this year’s event and cheer on the talented line-up of rockstar wannabes. Congratulations to Zurich’s Sophie Koo, winner of RNC’s Best Female Artist. And hats off to the amazing people behind FICAP.

Click here to read about the other successes of the night, and find more information on the fantastic efforts by FICAP to raise money for some truly worthwhile, youth-focused charities.

Portfolios Programs Projects – simply making them happen

“WHO WANTS TO BE A ROCKSTAR”… THE COUNTDOWN IS ON!

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There’s just over a week to go to FICAP’s 2012 charity event, “Who Wants To Be A RockStar”. This year, RNC is proud to be a platinum sponsor and we’d love to see you there! Financial services professionals by day take to the stage to become Rockstar wannabes for the night for this unique industry event. It’s going to be a fantastic night, but more importantly, everyone on stage and off will be helping to raise funds for two worthwhile organisations – YWCA NSW and Open Family Australia.

So don’t forget…
Wednesday March 21st, from 6pm, at The Metro Theatre, 624 George Street, Sydney

And we’ll see you there!

Click here to read more about “Who Wants To Be A RockStar” in Rachel Davis’s article.
And go to the FICAP website to read all about their incredible work in raising funds for charities that benefit young people - www.ficap.com.au/ or click here.