|
SPORTSMEN and women know that psychology is a major part of achieving their goals to become champions, and now these principles are being applied to project management.
Jonathan O'Donnell-Young, director of project management at Serious Consulting, says that these desirable characteristics can be a major factor in a project's success.
Serious Consulting is a global management consulting firm that leverages its skills and experience in organisational psychology, change management and high technology management.
Mr O'Donnell-Young says that good project management also does not occur in isolation of organisations but lies within any project. And that project can only be as good as the organisation and people in the group.
``There are some key skills that organisations need, including project governance skills,'' says Mr O'Donnell-Young.
He says many projects fall down because the management of resources and funds fail to focus on the start of the project. ``Project managers must focus on the project before it is in trouble, which might sound simple to say, but organisations can often fail to apply resources that the project needs at the beginning,'' he says. ``Instead, they often focus on the crisis that occurs when resources come at the end of the project in a rush.''
Mr O'Donnell-Young says project workers should focus on project cooperation and collaboration.
``Projects do not occur in a vacuum - a project can only ever be as good as the host organisation,'' he adds. ``The implication of this is that it is not enough to focus only on finding and training the best project managers. Everyone involved, from the executive sponsors to the people producing the actual project outputs, need to have the appropriate project related skills.
``For executives, these are project governance skills and for project resources they are the skills of forming teams, cooperating and collaborating across an organisation.
``Project problems often start at the beginning of a project when the people and/or the skills required are not available. This is not a project management issue-it is an organisational capability issue.
``The assumption is that people should be able to do this and without training, but many people in organisations are in competition with each other and if not trained in cooperation and team work the project will suffer. As a consultancy, we focus on providing specialist services in areas of cooperation and collaboration and team working. We are able to put together frameworks for governance and training as well as consulting on real life projects.''
Mr O'Donnell-Young says there are seven guiding principles for a successful consulting project. At the top of the list is to clearly identify desired business outcomes.
``The first thing you need to do when commencing a new consulting project should be to clearly identify the desired business outcomes,'' he says. ``What will success of this project look like? How can it be quantified in real terms, ie impact on revenue, sales growth, market share, employee morale, customer satisfaction, et cetera? When is this expected to happen? Both the consultant and the client need to commit up-front, and if possible publicly, to achieving these outcomes.
Number two is that the project should be self-funding, meaning that the cost of the project should be offset by savings achieved or revenue generated over time as a result of the project.
The third issue is to make sure the agreed outcome is achieved over a certain period of time at a certain cost.
``Fourthly, there should be a willingness to invest in change,`` Mr O'Donnell-Young says.
Number six is in the consultant's brief. It should be identifying competence shortcomings in key staff, transferring appropriate skills or organising staff training. This should be a planned and managed process as a part of the project, not just ad hoc.
Finally at number seven is what O'Donnell-Young describes as a symbiotic relationship. ``By adopting these principles, the focus of the relationship between consultant and client is on working together to engage the hearts and minds of the organisation in order to achieve the desired outcomes,'' he says. ``In this way, a symbiotic relationship develops, rather than a transactional relationship or one based on deferring to expertise.''
Another framework used by Serious Consulting involves applying psychological characteristics present in sport to project management. ``By applying the fundamental psychological characteristics present in sport to your projects, you can improve your project outcomes specifically by using a methodology known as the performance matrix,'' says Mr O'Donnell-Young. Serious Consulting takes the desirable characteristics present in sport from a psychological perspective and the associated traits of champion performers and applies them to project management. This includes planning for project success by recognising the differences in capability and performances between individuals and teams. ``The great thing about sport is that, be it professional or non-professional, it involves a number of discretionary effort functions,'' Mr O'Donnell-Young says. ``The fact that people participate and give their time and effort is remarkable, given the scale of sport participation. ``Sport globally is huge and it involves a team effort in cooperation and collaboration. These are the desirable attributes, which can be applied to project management. ``There are clear rules and boundaries and massive positive reinforcement. The sports framework provides highly visible goals and real time visibility of what stage the project is at.''
|
