Good Company or Bad Company? It’s in the way it treats projects!

Do you think future is unpredictable? Well, it is... and it isn’t!

Of course, unless you are a believer in crystal balls and tarot cards, there is no certain way to see what will happen down the road. But, looking at the present way of doing things, one can judge about likelihood of some future events or situations. As an example, it is simple to predict that a country that does not invest in its youth and easily lets, or even stimulates, its brightest children to get one-way tickets to some other places where their brains will be more appreciated, is up to no good. The same applies to players on the business field. A company investing in research, development, business opportunities of tomorrow... is more likely to be prepared once that tomorrow comes. 

Gone are the days when Project was just a fancy buzzword thrown around with no substantial weight. In modern business environment, projects are a driving force, a platform enabling companies to adapt and survive, transform and strive for a better future. Ask any market leader what projects mean to them, and the answers will not differ much from one another. So how do the best companies treat projects?

STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT

I have seen companies where projects are a bunch of independent ?isolated islands“ with little or no connection with each other and with the company’s business mainstream. In such cases, it is not rare that some departments are ?stronger“ than others and thus their projects get more priority, resources etc. But I have also seen cases where project portfolio is long-term planned and fully synchronized with company strategy. There, adequate priority is assigned to each project based on its factual importance and impact on company priorities. Resources are optimized and planned long-term. And sure enough, results are maximized. Of course, there are cases when ad-hoc action is needed (e.g. change in legal regulations or market conditions), but such projects should be an exception rather a rule.

TOP-TO-BOTTOM KNOWLEDGE

In its essence, project culture is not about how many projects does a company run simultaneously and whether or not there are the right project managers assigned to them. It actually indicates whether each and every employee, from top to bottom, understands what a project is (to the extent needed for that particular position) and more importantly, what her/his role is and how she/he can help and contribute to successful execution of projects. This knowledge is fundamental and can often represent the difference between the companies where projects fail (or last forever, which is even worse) and those where development and growth bloom through projects. This is why there is no such thing as too much training in project management and related skills.

CENTRALIZATION

As opposed to the ?isolated islands principle“, successful companies treat projects as pieces in a big puzzle and manage their project portfolio in an organized, synchronized fashion. To help in this, some choose organizational instances such as Project Management Office and tools such as MS Project Server, while others rely on more innovative methods of synchronizing projects and keeping them together, but they all have a common goal in centralization and harmonization with company’s strategy and key priorities.

KPI-ZATION

Understandably, the majority of companies assign their existing employees to new projects as they are started. The issue there is that most of these employees already have their everyday job. And chances are that it is a demanding one, too. And which of these two assignments do they see as a priority? Of course, the one that’s in their KPI’s! And normally that is their ?regular“ job, the one they are being called by their boss for and the one their bonus scheme is leaning on. And it will remain so until their project-related tasks are “officialized” in the same way.

CONSISTENCY

OK, so we have a strategy in place and we have aligned our project portfolio with it... all we need to do now is - stick to it! And it is easy to stay consistent when everything is perfect, but challenges arise when turbulence, such as changes in business environment or organizational changes, arrive. And sticking to own decisions in the most difficult of times is what separates champions from runners-up.

To wrap up the story with a piece of advice, I suggest that if you are a person who thinks in long terms and are about to invest time and energy building your career in a company, you might want to take a peek into its future by checking the above and seeing how it performs against the listed criteria.

Thoughts, experiences?