MANAGEMENT STYLE


Management style varies widely across organizations and within projects. This is particularly true for advanced projects, which frequently involve large numbers of people. The project manager can and does significantly influence the management style used within the project. The style that project managers use with their direct team will be replicated throughout the project. Therefore being conscious of your management style is important since it will enable you to influence the culture of your project. For example, you may choose personally to walk round the team daily to encourage them. Alternatively instead of talking directly to the team you might demand written reports that are accurate and available continuously.

When considering management style you should consider management styles for:

  • the project team;

  • the external stakeholders;

  • the external suppliers.

The project team

There are three basic styles of management that you can adopt: the dictatorial style, the consensus style and the laissez-faire style. All have their merits and problems and all are appropriate in certain circumstances. A good project manager should be able to recognize when a particular style is appropriate. You should be able to adopt that style when it is required.

The dictatorial style is perhaps the simplest style to understand. The style is exactly what its name suggests. The project manager applies a high degree of control to the activities of the staff in the team. He or she specifies on a day-to-day or hour-by- hour basis what the team member should be doing. An example of dictatorial control might be on a building site where a bricklayer is told to put a wall up in a certain place within a certain amount of time. This is very specific and does not require much input from the bricklayer. This style does not involve discussion. Generally speaking, this style is not popular and when applied to teams it can result in things going wrong. When deadlines are tight this style can be used very effectively to achieve successful results.

The most popular style is the consensus style but it is often not understood fully by project managers. They frequently believe that consensus is drawing together people from different areas in the project and asking their opinion. Once they have all the opinions they think that it is their job to decide what to do. This method of working is not a consensus style of management. This style is closer to the dictatorial style where the project manager decides what to do. A consensus style needs to go further than simply seeking opinions . The style needs actively to promote discussion. Ideally the discussion will result in a compromise solution that all involved will be happy to work with. Usually, reaching a compromise can be achieved; however, when it cannot be reached then the project manager may have to move to a dictatorial style. The consensus approach is normally well liked and motivational. The key to a successful consensus approach is to ensure that the discussion and the consensus seeking do not take too long. The purpose of consensus is to assure team members that their opinion is valued and that things can be changed based on their opinion.

Laissez-faire is the third style that project managers can apply. Laissez-faire assumes that every person is motivated to undertake the tasks concerned . It involves low levels of control from a project manager and relies on team members working out what they should be doing. This style assumes that there is a great degree of personal responsibility. People like to be trusted fully and to be given carte blanche to do work in the way that they believe it should be done. Unfortunately this style quickly becomes demotivating. Staff quickly realize that the lack of control contributes to their job being more difficult. This style is not recommended.

What works

When considering which management style to adopt you need to consider how flexible you are willing to be. You will have to apply this flexibility in sympathy with whatever style you choose. Figure 6.1 shows the spectrum of projects that can be undertaken. At one end are simple projects with one or two deliverables. These projects are normally well understood and can be planned with a high degree of accuracy. At the other end of the spectrum are the projects that have multiple deliveries. These projects are frequently poorly understood and planning has to happen on an ongoing basis. These projects are usually the advanced projects.

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Figure 6.1: Spectrum of projects

The management flexibility that needs to be applied to a project depends where in the spectrum, shown in Figure 6.1, the project falls . At the advanced project end of the spectrum, the right-hand side of the diagram, the projects mostly require a flexible style of management. The amount of flexibility that needs to be applied depends on where in the project life cycle the project is. At the early stages a large amount of flexibility needs to be applied since the project is poorly understood and it is still in the requirements analysis phase. At the later stages less flexibility is required since the work tasks that need to be carried out are by now planned. This is shown in Figure 6.2.

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Figure 6.2: Management flexibility needed

The flexibility and the style of management that you should apply therefore are dependent on the position of the project in relation to its life cycle. At the start you must adopt an open -to-anything attitude. You need to encourage others to explore the boundaries of the project. You should try to ensure that all the possible outcomes have been explored. You should be flexible and consensus based in your approach. As the project moves into a planning and definition phase you need to change your style. Now you need to become focused on removing everything that isn't core to the work, which means being more dictatorial in approach. Flexibility will still be required in the definition of the things that are core but those that are not should now be discarded. Moving into the testing and release phases you should become more focused on enforcing the detail of the plan. At this stage you should adopt the attitude and style that are closest to the dictatorial style.

The external stakeholders

Whilst one of the styles discussed is likely to be appropriate for the team involved in the project it is unlikely to be suitable for dealing with some of the more important project stakeholders. Very senior managers are generally only interested in the project for short bursts of time. Their interest is raised when a major milestone is about to happen or when something major has gone wrong. For the stakeholders who fall into this category an exception management style is likely to be most appropriate. Although candidates for this style are normally senior managers, there are many people external to the organization who should also be included. This would include journalists , planning officers, pressure group chairpersons and politicians .

Exception management focuses only on the deliverables and the higher-risk tasks within the project. It centres on these since they are the areas that the target stakeholder group is interested in. The project manager is expected to review and report on anything major that happens in the project. This reporting should not be carried out according to any given life cycle but instead should be driven on the basis of need. For example, if something is going wrong then an exception report should be written.

An exception management style can be very motivating. The style ensures that the key stakeholders and the organization's senior team feel that they are valued. They perceive that they are being singled out for special treatment. This reinforces to them that the project manager has recognized their importance within the context of the project. In return they allow the project manager room to manage the team on what they see as the less important day-to-day matters. This freedom can be very useful for the project manager and it alone often makes using exception management worth while.

The external suppliers

The management style that you should adopt for suppliers should be based on a mixture of the dictatorial style and the consensus style. The mixed style should present the suppliers with a straight-forward approach to negotiations, deliverables and other project- related matters. The project manager should emphasize honesty in the relationship with the supplier and should always try to find win-win situations. Most suppliers will respond well to this approach. They understand that project managers have a clear duty to put their own organization first; however, this does not have to mean a difficult relationship. Suppliers, like everyone else, enjoy dealing with project managers who they believe are being fair and honest in their negotiations.




Advanced Project Management. A Complete Guide to the Key Processes, Models and Techniques
Advanced Project Management: A Complete Guide to the Key Processes, Models and Techniques
ISBN: 0749449837
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2007
Pages: 69
Authors: Alan D. Orr

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