Leadership Challenges in Transformative Projects

Transformative projects offer different kinds of challenges in comparison to conventional projects. Let us consider setting up a new bank or a stock broking firm or a consumer durable company. It is a problem reasonably understood. I am not saying that it is easy. It is like chess. The rules of the games are known. What is needed for a success is leadership that is well experienced in this domain and has a very strategic mind to evolve winning strategy like a grandmaster.?We normally look for head honchos who knows it all and can with firmness and clear conviction tell his team where to go and how to go.

But when it a completely transformative agenda, challenges and rules of engagement are totally uncertain. There are no set “rules of the game” or a clear way forward. Need to continuously improvise and innovate. It becomes all the more challenging when the project eventually has to be self-sustaining with participation from profit maximising entrepreneurs and not just execution of an idea with grant from government or development agency or philanthropic capital

Here as a starting point, we need to have a vision, a dream of where we are trying to go. The daring to “go where no man has ever gone before” as Capt Kirk would say. The problems are unknown and the solutions are not there. It is embarking on a search with reasonable clarity of the shape of the dream. A big picture idea of the geography of the space we are operating. We have to try to solve an array of possible problems that we need to address. We need to learn to get things done from people on whom we have no control or direct influence. Here we don’t know who our audience is going to be and we don’t know what kind of dance they may like

There is no previous experience on this domain to draw upon. What is needed for the leadership is a different mindset. First and foremost, they should have experience in handling completely diverse and projects and the team should also consist of people with such diverse experience. They should be able to sit together, debate and fight out completely divergent and contrasting ideas and develop a portfolio of ideas with the mindset of a venture capitalist, knowing fully well that only few will succeed and continuously look for the portfolio performance and not just go after each of the ideas.

Here the normal hierarchical leadership will often fail. In the conventional leadership style, one is used to saying “yes” to their boss and hearing “yes” from the subordinates. If the team questions a point of view or gives alternate thoughts it is seen as resistance and resistance is often not welcome. For the boss the style is “my way or highway”. The team then becomes focused on heeding to the wishes of the big man

But in transformative project we need a team that continuously questions, debates and then agrees on a course of action and attempt execution with a collective responsibility. What we need in the leadership is not a person who knows it all and barks directions. But leaders who can work with a team with diverse experience with conviction and confidence in themselves and are willing to openly disagree on a rational basis. Such leaders should be ready to give confidence to the team that they are willing to experiment, but will own the collective decision to the outside world even though it was not suggested by them in the first place.

What we need is a team with the “Right Stuff” in them. The right stuff is not an algorithm that you can learn by heart. It is the sum total of a variety of Attitudes, Knowledge and Skill. Let us take a deeper look at “Right Stuff in Managing projects”. Click and Read on.

‘Right Stuff’ in Managing Projects (rollingstone-revelations.blogspot.com)