Adventures in Project Management

Types of Power

kerrywills — Fri, 25 May 2012 08:42:37 +0000

In their classic 1959 study on the bases of power, social psychologists John R. P. French and Betram Raven identified five categories of power described below.

Category	Description
Legitimate Power	Power of an individual because of the relative position and duties of the holder of the position within an organization. Legitimate Power is formal authority delegated to the holder of the position.
Referent Power	The ability to influence others based on interpersonal relationships and the ability to build loyalty. It is based on the charisma and interpersonal skills of the power holder. A person may be admired because of specific personal trait, and this admiration creates the opportunity for interpersonal influence. Here the person under power desires to identify with the personal qualities of the leader, and gains satisfaction from being an accepted follower.
Expert Power	The ability to influence others based on one’s skills, knowledge, experience or expertise. It is a function of the amount of knowledge a person has relative to the rest of the team members in the group or project.
Reward Power	The ability to influence others based on control over desired resources such as money, gifts or promotions
Coercive Power	The ability to influence others through the application of negative influence or the removal of positive events. It might refer to the ability to demote or to withhold other rewards. It’s the desire for valued rewards or the fear of having them withheld that ensures the obedience of those under power.

In the historical project landscape, Project Managers had the authority over project resources and mostly focused on using legitimate, reward and coercive power. Today since most resources are not direct reports and we work in matrixed projects, these techniques are less effective. Also, because of the complexities of technologies and business process on projects, it is hard for a Project Manager to have expert power in the technologies or business.

Therefore, in the current environment the Project Manager must rely mostly on referent power and must take more of a consultative approach towards resource management and their interaction with project stakeholders. This is why my book focuses primarily on consultative and influencing skills because that really is the main type of “power” that we have.

Formula for success

kerrywills — Fri, 18 May 2012 10:03:51 +0000

As long as I have been a manager I have been asked by employees how to move up in their careers or get glowing performance reviews. In my experience I have seen a few key themes that relate to the success of an individual. I believe these are the four main categories:

The work you do
The impact and visibility of the work you do
Opportunity/timing
The culture of the company and management

Just doing good work is not enough

A lot of people think that if they just do good work then they will be successful but that only really focused on one of the four factors (#1 above). Someone could do a good job at an activity which doesn’t get a lot of visibility or have much impact on the organization (#2) and therefore may get an average review or passed on for promotion. For example, there could be a resource on the team who manages a small piece of code configuration and have a peer who is managing several million dollars worth of delivery.

The other pieces to consider are around opportunity and timing (#3). Being in a larger program or organization provides more opportunities to move around as people leave or the program changes course.

Lastly, you also cant overlook the culture of a company or what management is looking for (#4) – some places value delivery and others may value the ‘spin’ or being political savvy. It is also important to have management that will champion you during the performance discussions.

So while it is important to go a good job at what you do, everyone needs to recognize that that is only a small portion of the formula and should continue look for areas that provide opportunities, work on high impact activities and understand what the companies value.

Executive Stratego

kerrywills — Fri, 11 May 2012 08:56:11 +0000

I used to love playing Stratego when I was a kid – this is the game where you send out different armies to attack your opponent. The strategy was that some pieces could beat other pieces and you have to guess which pieces they had. For example a General could beat a Colonel, but then the spy could beat the General.

Sometimes I feel like I am watching people play Stratego at work during an issue or escalation. One person may send out an e-mail which then gets replied by someone else who copies someone higher in the organization. Then the other person may reply copying in their higher ups and so on. This game of management escalation is always interesting to watch – my Director beats your PM…well my Senior Director beats your Director…and on and on.

“Hmmm should I play my Director piece or my VP piece?”

How about instead of the escalation Stratego game we just figure out how to solve things ourselves! Then we can use the roles to do real strategic work…

Don’t Get Too Comfortable

kerrywills — Fri, 04 May 2012 07:30:19 +0000

I have done many project health assessments in my career. That is, I have been asked to come in and evaluate a troubled project to identify risks/gaps and recommend solutions to mitigate them. I have also been on many projects where auditors or consultants do the same. The approach is always the same, which is to ask the team members what the problems are and then organize them into themes.

This approach of assessing projects is not some secret and magical approach and therefore all of us should be able to step back on our own projects and view ourselves as an outside auditor. We all know the problems on our projects but, what I believe happens, is that we get too “comfortable” in our projects and familiar with these problems as just “par for the course.”

Therefore my advice is this – don’t get too comfortable. On a regular basis step back and consider the challenges of your project and document the recommendations as if you were that outside consulting company. How would you solve the problems? What would you tell senior management? And then look to implement these recommendations.

By constantly introspecting on your program you won’t tolerate things that you may have become used to. So start getting uncomfortable…

Classic Workplace Moves: The Phone Earpiece Guy

kerrywills — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 08:11:45 +0000

Building upon my “Classic Workplace Moves” series I was reminded of yet another classic this week when someone was talking to me and had their phone earpiece in their ear. I didn’t think they were on a call so I though it was weird to have it in their ear.

As usual instead of paying attention to what they were saying I was thinking about all the questions I had…

Did he forget to take it out?
How long has it been in his ear?
Is he waiting for a call or is this in there at all times to be ready when the time comes?
How many phone calls does he take a day which would warrant having this in all day?
Did he have childhood fantasies of being an FBI agent with the earpiece?
Were they a Star Trek junkie and a fan of Lt. Uhuru?

"Yes Captain, I am ready and waiting..."

I guess I could understand if someone was driving and needed their hands free, but not sure you need to be “hands free” during the work day. Do other people do this and have any thoughts as to why it would be a good idea?