by Joseph Grenny
Project managers today are two to three times more likely to become scapegoats than to become successes.
This point was dramatically emphasized by a recent VitalSmarts study of projects and project managers. Titled "Silence Fails: Five Crucial Conversations for Flawless Execution," the study involved more than 1,000 project professionals from 40 multinational organizations and included analysis of 2,200 projects -- everything from small information-technology projects to billion-dollar capital investments.
The case of Bob Kelley, a seasoned project leader, illustrates the importance of the study’s central findings.
Kelley led an effort to in-source the billing system of a major business-services company. The billing system was the company’s lifeblood -- responsible for drawing hundreds of millions of dollars into the company every month by issuing timely and accurate bills to more than 20 million customers. For 20 years, a vendor had handled the billing system. For three years, Kelley led a sometimes unruly and loose confederation of more than 1,000 professionals drawn from various functions in his company to change over to a company-owned system. Because he was a project manager and not their line manager, getting things done was often a challenge.
The stakes couldn’t have been higher, and the project’s status couldn’t have been worse. Eventually, the project found itself 100-percent overdue and 300-percent over the original budget -- an investment of well more than $250 million to that point, with no end in sight. Kelley believed, however, that there was a light at the end of the tunnel. The first cut-over date for a small contingent of customers was two weeks away. As he walked out of a release review, he believed that all was in order and the chance of success was high.
A month later, Kelley was handed his head. The release was a disaster. The vendor managing the legacy system failed to transfer data when required. Once it transferred, the new bills were pocked with errors, and the system suffered from multiple "severity 1" glitches that caused it to crash uncontrollably during the billing cycle. When he was dismissed, Kelley was escorted to his desk by a security guard, who then walked him out of the building.
Although we could devote this entire article to discussing the disgraceful way that a 15-year company veteran was dispatched, the more important story was how shockingly predictable Kelley’s demise was -- and how terribly common it is. If Kelley had access to recently compiled data, he would have realized that the light at the end of his tunnel was in fact a slow-moving train headed directly his way. The slow-motion train wreck had been in progress for two years and was entirely avoidable.
These days, less than 30 percent of projects come in on time, on budget, and on spec. Seventy percent either fail outright or are significant disappointments. Although a tremendous amount has been done to improve project management competence during the past 20 years, there’s surprisingly little progress to show for it. New processes, new tools, new techniques, and new governance concepts haven’t improved the odds of success by much.
Silence is a common contributor to 85 percent of project failures. Project execution failures are almost always preceded by conversation failures. A failure in any of five crucial conversations causes almost certain damage to projects and contributes substantially to ultimate disappointment, or in Kelley’s case, outright failure. A year after Kelley’s departure, the company admitted failure in transferring the billing system and returned to the original vendor. The ultimate cost of the failure exceeded $350 million, not to mention the colossal waste of management attention.
Meanwhile, organizations that develop substantial competence at these crucial conversations report up to 70 percent fewer failures than their peers.
The five conversations address problems familiar to almost every project manager. In fact, the study found that 90 percent of project managers regularly face one or more of these problems. The VitalSmarts study reveals two significant and seminal findings and promises relief to leaders who take action to address them:
• The surprising frequency of these problems. They’re so common that they’ve become an expected part of the project-management landscape. In fact, they’re so common that they’ve become invisible to many leaders.
• The embarrassing rarity with which these problems are thoroughly discussed and resolved. Very few are discussed at all, and dramatically fewer are ever resolved during a project’s life cycle.
I share here a brief description of these five conversations, and a set of best practices for building competence in addressing them.
1. AWOL sponsors . Many project leaders work regularly with sponsors who fail to give them leadership and political support. As a result, their projects become stranded and exposed. In Bob Kelley’s case, the sponsor who should have fought the political battles required to get the old vendor to cooperate rarely returned calls, seldom followed up with commitments, and ultimately left Kelley to fend for himself.
When Kelley took on the project, he was told through the grapevine that his sponsor was a bit of a deadbeat. Rather than directly address this issue, he began working around it. He called on other executives for help and in other ways enabled the problem by absolving his sponsor of responsibility.
The VitalSmarts study shows that 65 percent of project managers regularly face this problem, and fewer than one in five is able to effectively discuss and resolve this concern. As a result, more than 75 percent of projects afflicted with this problem come in substantially over budget, behind schedule, and below specifications.
2. Fishing, check kiting, and sandbagging. When Kelley took over the billing project, he was given one year to complete it and a budget of $45 million. Rather than ask what time or budget was required, his executive leaders played a common game in project execution -- they "fished" for the best answer they could get. They gave him an outrageous goal and hoped the performance pressure it created would motivate him to find the best answer possible. Kelley was a good soldier and tried to make it work. It didn’t.
Unrealistic constraints also get placed on projects through "check kiting." An executive or customer will make commitments to another stakeholder without the project team’s consent and then present it to them as a done deal. Over time, teams that suffer from these mindless demands begin to "sandbag" when they’re asked for project estimates. They pad budgets and timelines, anticipating this arbitrary scope creep and resource withdrawal.
This problem afflicts the work of 85 percent of project managers and is effectively discussed by only 19 percent of those who are affected. As a result, more than 80 percent of these projects turn into disappointments and failures.
3. Skirting. Eighty-three percent of project leaders say that their effectiveness is undermined by powerful stakeholders and managers who attempt to skirt decision making, planning, and prioritization processes. Sometimes it’s because of a need for immediate gratification: They need what they need and don’t want to be burdened with practical considerations, so they work around the process. More than four out of five managers fail to effectively confront these violations of project- management discipline.
For example, the vice president of marketing in Kelley’s company repeatedly injected additional requirements into the project with no consideration of their effect on the project’s budget or schedule. He did so through direct intervention and deal- cutting with sponsors and executives, which left Kelley and his team to deal with the fallout. Once again, the problem wasn’t only that the marketing vice president "skirted" the process, it was that no one confronted his violations in a way that stopped them. As a result, the violations continued, adding momentum to the oncoming train wreck.
4. Project chicken. Once a project gets underway, it can derail when various subteams or team members fail to honestly report project risks. Almost every organization in the study reported some form of "project chicken," and more than half of the project managers say that they face it regularly. This costly game resembles the lunatic practice of driving cars head-on as a test of nerves to see who swerves out of the way first -- or who’s more "chicken." The corporate version is played when project participants fail to admit that they may fall short on deliverables and need more time. Instead, they hope that some other group that has problems will speak up first, causing a delay in the master schedule -- which gives everyone relief. When project participants play chicken, the status-and-review process becomes a joke. The team loses opportunities to gracefully respond to problems by revising goals, shifting resources, and reorganizing plans. Instead, the project hurtles forward on a collision course with failure while everyone watches, nervous and silent.
The enormous pressure to announce good news set Kelley up for failure by making it difficult to discuss risks. It made it hard to admit that a single troublesome vendor could pose a risk to the entire project, even though the problems with the vendor were longstanding and many. It made it hard to admit that shortcuts during testing could pose a risk to the entire project, even though testing had been seriously limited to meet the aggressive release schedule. The problem was that none of these risks was addressed either in Kelley’s final project review or in prior sessions. Project participants had seen these trains coming for months, but no one had spoken up in an effective way.
Only about one in four project leaders is able to effectively address project chicken. When they fail, 86 percent of their projects miss schedule commitments, 78 percent go over budget, and 74 percent deliver less than they were required.
5. Team failures. From the beginning, Kelley suffered from the common lot of all project managers: He had far more responsibility than authority. He "led" a group of 3,000 professionals, only seven of whom reported to him. The rest had other masters, and it showed.
Eighty percent of project managers are hobbled by team members who don’t show up to meetings, fail to meet schedules, or lack the horsepower to meet ambitious goals. As a result, project managers frequently feel powerless in selecting and coaching the people that they must count on to meet their deliverables.
Worse yet, project leaders must negotiate with functional managers to staff their projects. These functional managers often have many other priorities and are far less responsive than needed by the project manager. When project leaders can’t hold accountable functional managers who don’t deliver or team members who fail to meet their responsibilities, four out of five projects come up short or fail completely.
The light at the end of the tunnel doesn’t have to be an oncoming train. Instead, it can be a successful conclusion to any or all of these five crucial issues. When these issues are resolved, the project’s outcomes improve by up to 70 percent.
Because of the pervasiveness of silence and failure around these five issues, special attention should be paid to those few project managers who skillfully address them. One organization was able to increase the likelihood that these issues would be raised and resolved by 150 percent within just one year, and saw dramatic improvements in quality, productivity, and employee satisfaction as a direct result.
Following are some best practices project managers and leaders can follow to address these issues and build systemwide organizational competence to resolve them.
• Bang the drum . The crucial issues we’re addressing are so common that most leaders have stopped seeing them. Leaders shouldn’t expect to improve their organizations’ competence at having these five conversations without focusing the organizations’ attention -- i.e., making the issues visible. The best way that leaders can begin focusing attention is to explain the crucial nature of these issues. Sharing the information in this article is a great way to get conversations started and escalate the importance of addressing these issues.
• Baseline and measure regularly . Leaders who are serious about improving how their people address these concerns regularly survey how well people across various projects are addressing them. A survey can either be administered regularly organizationwide or at key intervals during specific projects, and helps draw attention to vitally necessary issues and whether they’re adequately discussed and addressed.
• Invest in skills. Most project managers and participants lack the confidence to address these politically sensitive issues because they don’t know how to lead such risky discussions. Leaders who train their people to deal with these specific conversations see substantial improvement in whether and how the issues get resolved.
• Hold senior management accountable. Investing in project-participant competence is necessary but insufficient. Holding sponsors, managers, and executives accountable for responding to and welcoming these conversations is the other half of the formula.
• Reward. Finally, executives should highlight and reward people who take a risk to raise these conversations. The key to getting 100 people to speak up is to publicly reward the first one who does.
Many project managers successfully address these conversations even in unwelcoming environments. They possess remarkable skills for pressing politically sensitive points in a way that doesn’t provoke defensiveness. Here’s how they do it:
• Recognize the crucial conversation. First, these project managers are more likely to speak up because they understand how risky and crucial the conversation is. They don’t just consider the risks of speaking up; they’re aware of the risks of not speaking up, so they make the attempt more often than their less-skillful peers.
• Hold the right conversation. Many project managers report that they attempt to bring up tough topics, but if you watch them in action, you’ll discover that they aren’t actually bringing up the real issues. For example, their sponsor is AWOL -- consistently missing meetings or failing to keep commitments. The project manager approaches the sponsors by saying, "We missed you at the last meeting." This is the wrong conversation. The subject to discuss is not the recent absence, but the pattern of missed commitments. When you hold the wrong conversation, you leave the real problem unsolved. Skilled project managers hold the right conversation, even when it’s challenging.
• Lead with facts . Don’t start a risky conversation with vague conclusions, judgments, or accusations. For example, don’t begin with, "This project is in the red because you haven’t gotten all the stakeholders on board." Although this statement might be true, it lacks the evidence that leads you to believe that the sponsor hasn’t gotten stakeholders on board. Conclusions like this are inflammatory and provoke defensiveness. Skillful project managers are far more likely to start by laying out the factual basis of their concerns before sharing the riskier conclusions. For example, "Our Asia office is now six months behind in getting us the data we need to proceed. We’ve made more than a dozen requests for these data. In the past three months, I’ve brought this up with you during each of our reviews. At that time you said you would make contact with the Asia V.P. …" The facts help the AWOL sponsor see more clearly what your concern is in a way that’s less controversial and accusatory.
• Maintain safety. Finally, skillful project managers never approach someone in a way that sounds like they’re simply pursuing their narrow agenda. Senior leaders are much less defensive when you hold them accountable if they know that you care about what they care about. Be sure to demonstrate sensitivity for their concerns. This creates an atmosphere of safety, and they’re far more likely to respond favorably to your concerns. For example, when approaching the AWOL sponsor, you might say, "When I share these concerns about areas where we need more support from you, I want you to know that you can trust me to require the absolute minimum of your time and attention to ensure that the project succeeds. If I ever appear to be frivolous with your time, I hope you’ll point that out so I can be more efficient."
Silence fails because the pervasive failure to hold these five crucial conversations contributes profoundly to widespread disappointment and disaster in critical-project execution. Drawing attention to these five conversations so that leaders and project managers can begin to address them with the intensity that they deserve will allow the talents of project participants to more consistently produce flawless execution and stellar results.
Joseph Grenny is the co-author of the New York Times bestsellers Crucial Conversations (McGraw-Hill, 2002) and Crucial Confrontations (McGraw-Hill, 2005). He’s a cofounder of VitalSmarts, where he leads a series of consulting and research projects on the role that crucial conversations play in project execution, medical errors, employee retention, and other bottom-line metrics. He’s assisted more than 300 of the Fortune 500 companies on corporate change initiatives during the past 30 years. Grenny can be reached through his company’s Web site at www.vitalsmarts.com.
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