Project Engagement

[Terrence Seamon]

David,

You asked: "I would really appreciate some network perspective, ideas, and suggestions. We are focused on employee engagement but many employees are now working on projects or in projects. How do we engage the various stakeholder to ensure project management success? How do we engage the sponsor, the team, and other parties to the project? How does the project manager stay engaged?"

Great question! Especially since projects, project teams, project leaders, project managers, and the field of Project Management have all been booming these past few decades.

I'll start the conversation with a thought... A project is like a voyage.

- There is a destination, a start, a planned route, and an end.

- As with any journey, there will be ups and downs, highs and lows, along the way.

- There will be small wins -- as well as disappointments, storms, unforseen interruptions, delays, side trips -- along the way to the ultimate conclusion.

Looked at this way, projects are journeys with many opportunities for coaching, for recognition, for celebration.

Project managers are often highly schooled in the "PMBOK" (Project Management Body of Knowledge) which helps them to plan and organize and run projects systematically. They also need to develop the leadership capability to motivate and inspire and engage their people for the voyage.

Terry

[Lisa]

Terry,
What you have spoken about here is the distinction I make between the "hard skills" (PMBOK) and "soft skills" (the ability to motivate, to lead and to instill confidence and trust) of project management. Many in management are well educated and “hard skills” have been learned over the course of their often lengthy education. The “soft skills” on the other hand are not easily taught, and thus many struggle with leadership, motivating their employees and building trust and confidence in their office. I think the best way to engage various stakeholders, team members sponsors and other outside parties is to focus on soft skills.

[Terrence Seamon]

Hi Lisa,
Thanks for joining in on this topic.
When you wrote, "the 'soft skills' are not easily taught," I found myself nodding in agreement. I often say that the soft skills are actually the truly hard skills because:
- they are hard to learn and
- they are hard to do
Their presence (or absence) will be felt in many ways by the organization
Terry

[David Zinger]

I wonder if we have a problem in terminology here.

Soft and hard. Soft sounds like easy, mushy, lacking form and substance while hard sounds defined and tangible and significant.

I think when we call our people skills soft they are more easily dismissed as a extra or an irritant. It often seems to me that projects fail not because of logic but because of emotions, relationships, avoidance, politics, etc.

I don't think we will change the way things are referred to but I wonder what might have happened if we called them Project Alpha and Project Beta skills and I won't even specify which is which but I bet some people would say the hard skills would be Alpha because that comes first.

I hear the "hard skills" Alpha dog going whoof whoof yet wondering why things are not proceeding as they should according to the chart, time line, or scope.

[Terrence Seamon]

David,
Welcome to the conversation. Since you really started this topic, I'm glad you joined in. I agree that our terminology (e.g. soft, hard) and our thinking can get us into trouble.
Returning to your original question, you asked, "How do we engage the various stakeholder to ensure project management success?" A few thoughts on this vital topic...
- Identify who the project stakeholders are
- Make contact with each project stakeholder
- Find out from each project stakeholder what they are expecting the project to achieve
- Document and share these expectations with the project team members so that everyone can manage expectations
- Keep in continuous contact with stakeholders throughout the life of the project
- Stay alert for any changes in stakeholder expectations
One of the sure routes to project failure is to get disconnected from your stakeholders.
Terry

[David Zinger]

Terrence,
I appreciate the points you outlined and would strongly align myself with the path to project failure being or getting disconnected from stakeholders. Disconnection is a pun fashion is to create mi-stakeholders or missing stakeholders. Thanks.
David

[Julia Miller]

For me, I'd make the first 4 bullets a little stronger and insist on agreement. I'm dealing with product development so I'm looking at more than just a current project but a series of them that get to a vision.

Specifically:
1. You have to start with a vision that every stakeholder agrees on. (For me that's some of your 3rd bullet but more.) Take as long as it takes to be very clear about it and get complete agreement.
2. Then each project along the vision has to have a focus which would be your #3.
3. The whole team has to believe in what you are doing. If someone doesn't, do everything in your power to get them off the team. They will suck the energy out of everyone. I heard a term "energy vampire" once and it really sums it up!

Julia

[David Zinger]

Julia,
I have used the term energy vampire too and quite like how "graphic" it is. I think if we engage our stakeholders then we are less likely to have to put a stake through a vampire-like stakeholder! I appreciate your inclusive agrement combined with vision and tenacity to do whatever it takes if someone does not engage.
David

[Stephen Booth]

A key point of methodologies such as PRINCE2 is that to initiate a project you must have agreement and sign off on what you're seeking to achieve and, at a high level, how you are going to achieve it. Mishandled this can lead to a lot of unecessary paperwork but correctly handled it can be very helpful as it ensures that what is built is what was wanted.

Stephen

[Lisa Forsyth]

I recently got involved in a project after it went sideways due to a lack of what I would now call “stakeholder engagement.” The project was shipped and it couldn’t support its full revenue stream. The Program Manager identified the appropriate stakeholders, gathered their requirements, gained consensus on the project vision and success factors, reviewed specifications, agreed to a schedule, conducted weekly meetings, and proactively communicated progress and changes along the way. The end result, however, was that the stakeholder did not really understand what the vision, scoping decisions, and schedule (changes or not) actually meant to his job function.

First, to illicit discussion, who would you see as being ultimately accountable for this breakdown? My initial reaction was that the PM didn’t really engage the stakeholder, since there is a difference between communicating with a stakeholder and actually working with them to ensure they understand what the end-result means to them specifically—but a PM can’t feasible master every stakeholder’s job function, and a stakeholder should be more than a passive observer (which was the case in this situation). Some of my peers disagree, and I would like to hear what others think.

Second, and more important than “who is to “blame” of course, is how to mitigate this in the future? It was a problem that went unnoticed until the very end in a highly-complex project that crossed all organizational boundaries, and everyone involved thought everyone else involved was fully engaged. But it turned out to be a perfect example of poor stakeholder engagement, and no one knew it. So, how can we really know if a stakeholder is engaged or just along for the ride? This is especially challenging when they hold specialized knowledge and are representing the interests of an unfamilar business group. What are the warning signs of stakeholder disconnect?

[Stephen Booth]

I'd say responsibility rests with the project sponsor (the person in the business on whose authority the project is being run). It their job to make sure that everyone is on board and is having their needs met from the project (and paying for it).

To mitigate it the project sponsor needs to be getting out there and talking to the troops, not just sitting in their office and occasionally signing purchase orders.

Stephen

[Craig Brown]

Stephen

Of course most sponsors are not engaged in the day to day activities of the project.

Sure they shuld be involved in the vision setting, but after that it is the responsibility of EVERYONE on the project team.

And if you are the only one on the team thinking about these issues it is your job to shout out STOP and get everyone to realise the oproblem and take action to fix it.

[Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin]

AS a project management writer and researcher, I have to say I find the fact that this is cropping up on the EE network very encouraging! One thing I'd like to add to the discussion is the idea that project management (viewed from the angle not of techniques and tools, but as a management discipline) has the seeds in it to create more engagement. I've got a column about this posted at https://www.cbponline.com/Articles.asp?ID=197. Organizing work around projects resolves some of the thorniest issues with engagement, creating those "zest factors:--a sense of urgency, team spirit, and a clear connection between the work and the achievement--which engage people's hearts and minds. I also think the whole notion of stakeholder identification and involvement, from the earliest stages of a project, is another engagement-promoting tool that gives project management an edge.Tom Peters has written that this is why all work should be organized as projects--which is, I think, taking it a little far, but I can see what he's driving at.