I love football. Why? Because I love the tactics, the insights, detail about players and their specific skills, positioning of players when the ball is not near them. And because building a team is hard work. Building a team with members who are willing to fight for each other is lifting barriers and even more hard work. A winning team is an art. The flawless organization around a team is an integral part of winning.

In the dynamic game of Innovation within companies, you see many teams. Some perform well, others deeply fail. So what can we learn from football in the game of innovation?

First of all, there is one team who sets the golden standard for out of world team display coupled with results: the Dream Team of Barcelona led by coach Pep Guardiola. Guardiola let his team play as many managers dream of playing their teams: harmonious, passing almost every ball correctly, result oriented, lack of big egos because the team and the club are more import, efficient, admired by others, outperforming the competition.

What has this dream team got to do with innovation in business? Innovation is the wheel of progress in a company. Everything new or redesigned starts at the Innovation department. In football terms, Innovation is the main striker in your organization. And a striker needs to score more goals for his team than does his competitor. The striker needs a balanced team around him. People who can pass the ball precisely, who control the midfield, who can defend and attack. People who train intensely to keep getting better and better in what they do. And people who really love what they do.

In innovation, you get mixed teams of marketers, product managers, operation managers, business and IT consultants, project managers, IT developers. Too often have I encountered a big gap between the defence (IT), midfield (product and operation managers) and strike force (marketers, innovators):

• Strikers just want to strike without wanting to know that midfield and defence have to put in hard work to let strikers score goals
• Midfield players aren’t balanced out, meaning either too much defensive midfielders who don’t assist the strikers in scoring goals or too much offensive midfielders who let the defence down and consequently receive a lot of goals
• Defence is only thinking about keeping the opposition away from scoring goals, without looking at the attacking and winning aspect of the game
• Players in all three lines (strikers, midfield, defence) don’t position themselves well without having the ball

Comparing your innovation team with Barcelona, ideally you should have:

• Players positioning themselves without the ball to keep the ball in your team and hence keep initiative and lead the game.

This means that your innovation team members keep communication and collaboration active all the time. Even if they do not have the bulk of the work or the spotlights on them for the moment.

•  Strikers should know at least some basics of defending and midfield to gain understanding and to position themselves well to be an effective goal scorer.

In your innovation teams, let marketers and innovators learn and invest in the knowledge of IT and operations.

•  Midfielders should be evenly balanced, with the balance shifting towards a more attacking style of play in order to keep pressure upon your opposition.

Innovation team wise, your operation people should know a lot about IT and assist your marketers and innovators in the nitty gritty details of creating an effective innovation. Let marketers see and feel what happens in operations if your product or service has flaws.

•  Defence should be solid as a rock, with upcoming wingbacks to support strikers.

IT in most companies tends to be defensive. Order and predictability are the two words that ideally describes an IT department. In modern innovative companies, this is not enough. The world is not predictable, and technologies change fast. IT should consists of analysts, developers and managers who know what commercially keeps your company alive. They should feel the pain customers feel when a product or service is failing. All too often, IT does not care because they don’t feel the pain. Involve them. Teach them about who’s paying them to let them work for you. Let IT sit together in solution mode with operations, marketers and innovators. Don’t keep them out. Actively involve them. And get rid of people who have a linear thinking mentality stemming from the 80’s.

It takes a lot of effort, communication, stakeholder management, team building, persistence, tough decisions and faith. Guardiola perfected his team. Now it is time to perfect yours. Adhere to these guidelines in forming your own Dream Team…and go out and win the Innovation game!

I’ve been asked several times to advice my clients about what I think of the project managers working at the client’s company. It is pretty tough for me to assess another project manager. I’m not on his team, so I don’t know how he leads his people. But still, with my own experience and careful observation, I’ve seen quite some misfits in my profession. These lot cost you and your company a lot of money and consequentially give project managers a bad reputation.

So how do you spot the project misfit? You can quickly assess the qualities of the project manager you’re working with by:

1. Testing and comparing him to your best project managers.

2. Checking with project team members and other stakeholders, preferably the Business Executive.

To make life easier for you, I made the comparison below to help you spot and smoke out  the project misfit in your organization:

Once you’ve recognized the misfit, you show them how to be a professional. Here’s how to smoke them out of your organization:

1. Give accurate, compassionate and candid feedback. Tell him about observed  behavior and feedback from the team. Asks if he recognizes this. Tell him he has two weeks to improve his ways or he is out.
2. Make a note of your conversation and send this to him by e-mail. You need to have proof that you gave him feedback and he got a chance to improve.
3. Keep gathering evidence and feedback from the team and stakeholders in those two weeks.
4. Talk to him every other day about his improvement, so he’ll know that you are serious about him not performing as you expected. And yes, make notes of all of these conversations and e-mail him for confirmation.
5. After two weeks, it’s up to you to decide if you’ll continue with him or not.

If you don’t, see my article “How to select a project manager – Shashi Consulting’s Top 11 tips for Project Directors and Business Executives” how to find a replacement.

If you do, make absolutely sure that a professional project manager works independently, without you having to manage him all the time.

If you have a gut feeling that the misfit will cost you a lot of precious time and energy to keep him on track despite his progress, smoke him out anyway. As Manager or Director you need to focus on your strategic objectives.

Bad project managers cost you and your company money. They will leave you with a hangover. They will block your own career opportunities. Smoke out the misfit…before it is too late.

Selecting a bad project manager will lose you money, your reputation and your career. Selecting an outstanding project manager will earn you career progress, an excellent return on investment and happy employees looking forward achieving new goals.

Here is Shashi Consulting’s checklist how to select a project manager:

1. Start with an understanding of why you are hiring a project manager.
2. Check if the type of project manager you need is somebody to get things started, a person who needs to manage delivery or both.
3. Get the best project manager in your team and let her interview the project manager with you.
4. Let the Business Executive interview the project manager as well, if you are not the Business Executive who has to work with the project manager.
5. Let potential team members interview the project manager. After all, the project manager needs to be able to lead and motivate them. Keep in mind that project management is a people’s business.
6. Check for at least three references. If the project manager refuses, drop him immediately.
7. Select for attitude, not for skills- or industry knowledge-only. Don’t be blinded by selecting only those who have experience in your industry. Project Management is a process expertise. Get fresh insights and best practices from other industries the project manager has worked in. A good project manager will be inquisitive and learn quickly how things work in your industry while delivering your project results.
8. Check for credentials such as IPMA and PMP. These are excellent tools for assessing and measuring project managers objectively on people management and technical skills. They prove the project manager knows the necessary elements of project management.
9. Do not be fooled by project managers only having PRINCE2 and /or MSP without IPMA or PMP. PRINCE2 and MSP are nice to haves. They don’t teach you how to motivate people, set up a budget, forecast and many other project management essentials.
10. Do select a project manager as a strategic partner. This is the value added you’re looking for. You can check this by asking the project manager what the business benefits of his previous project results were.
11. Respect the project manager’s expertise once you’ve hired him. Evaluate him on the results he delivers. Don’t tell him what steps he needs to take to get results. Have you ever told your surgeon to take these and these steps to get the health you need?

Please share your comments, insights and most of all best practices/ experience with what criteria you think are important to select the best project manager.

My next topic will be about how you can recognize a phony project manager and smoke them out of your organization.

Thank you for making time to visit my site and read my blog!

So who’s this blog intended for? Well, I have YOU in mind:

• Clients needing expertise on improving their business
• Project Managers curious about what I have to say on their expertise
• Professionals such as marketeers or programmers who work with project managers and want to know more about how to manage their project manager
• People not being a project manager but wanting to know more about the job I do
• Curious minds

When people ask me what I do for a living and I tell them proudly ‘I’m a project manager’, I see them piercing through me as if I were swearing at them. Yes, nowadays a secretary is called ‘office manager’, a car mechanic is ‘automobile manager’ and even my cleaning lady refers to herself as ‘manager of dusty affairs’.

So I don’t blame people for giving me either harsh or blank looks when I say what I am. Actually, I think you can compare a project manager with a goalkeeper: when you stop the ball, everybody says ‘oh well, it’s his job, he’s getting paid for that’. But when you let one slip through, everyone sees you as the guilty one.

Still, there are alot of good things to be had as a project manager:

1. You’ll never be short of work – the world will never run out of project that need managing
2. Variety is the spice of life – no two projects are exactly the same and there’s always something new to learn
3. There’s plenty of job satisfaction – especially when you something through to completion
4. Work is interesting and challenging – you’re busy solving problems, there’s never a dull moment
5. It’s a people’s business – you get to work for all kinds of interesting people

So let me take you on an easy digestible journey through the life of a project manager in real life. No theoretical stuff here.

Please contribute, share your ideas, comment, let me know what topics you want to read about. I want you to derive value from what you read here.