Project Leadership Competencies


With the 1990 DSMC research study as a model (Cullen and Gadeken 1990), the subsequent research studies found a common set of competencies with some variation in rank order. These competencies were characteristics of top performers, and they were not further classified into management or leadership skills. The DSMC study of United Kingdom (UK) defense project managers (Gadeken 1991) validated these same competencies, with UK project managers favoring more of the analytical rather than interpersonal skills. Several underlying themes emerged from the set of competencies found in the research. These themes are listed in Table 5 and discussed next along with selected quotes from the project manager interviews.

Table 5: The Best Project Managers
  1. Are strongly committed to a clear mission.

  2. Have a long-term and big-picture perspective.

  3. Are both systematic and innovative thinkers.

  4. Find and empower the best people for their project teams.

  5. Are selective in their involvement in project issues.

  6. Focus on external stakeholders.

  7. Thrive on relationships and influence.

  8. Proactively gather information and insist on results.

Note: Italicized competencies differentiate top performers

1. Strong Commitment to a Clear Mission

Top performing project managers are first and foremost mission focused and results oriented. They take personal ownership of their projects in a manner almost approaching the quest of a champion fighting for a just cause. They model their personal commitment with such dedication and enthusiasm that it permeates their project team, external customers, and support organizations. Here is the way one Air Force civilian project manager described the project goal to his team:

Remember your primary mission. Keep saying that to yourself. Your job is to field a system that will put electrons on the (enemy). Everything else is incidental to that and not important.

In the words of one Army project manager:

I felt frustrated. But at the same time I feel like it is such good thing we are doing for the Army that it is worth all the frustration and hard work and whatever else we need to do to make it successful.

2. Long-Term and Big-Picture Perspective

The best project managers interpret events from a big-picture (mission) perspective with an eye toward future consequences of immediate decisions. As one Navy project manager said:

We were heading to a point where, although it was years away from happening, things would start to diverge. But action needed to be taken right then and there, so that we would have enough canisters to go around and support the missile base. That was the driving factor in what I was doing.

Another Army project manager stated that as a project manager, you must maintain a:

big-picture focus—keep the whole effort, along with the people involved, in focus, not letting the day-to-day details and tasks become more important than the overarching goal.

3. Systematic and Innovative Thinkers

Outstanding project managers are both systematic and innovative thinkers. They understand the complex and rapidly changing environment in which they must work. Further, they are able to see through this complexity to provide a structure for sound decision-making as well as a point of departure for more innovative solution options. In the words of Admiral Carlisle Trost, a former Chief of Naval Operations:

Figuring out what is going on in a complex world is the heart of leadership. Otherwise leaders are defeated by events they do not understand.

Today's project managers are expected to "think outside the box" to provide a better system or better value for money. As one Army project manager adamantly stated:

If something is not prohibited by law or regulation or can be waivered, and it will benefit your project, then do it! Push the system until it cries out in pain to get what is needed to make your project successful!

4. Find and Empower the Best People

The best project managers are masters of working with and through others. They focus their efforts on finding the best people for their project teams and then let them handle the myriad of decisions and details that epitomize even the most basic projects. As one project manager noted:

The first thing you do is get the right people. My contractors have made an observation. They told me I don't have many people here but the ones I've got are terrific. And, that's exactly the way they were picked.

Another Army project manager described how he assessed and then leveraged the strengths of his staff:

I believe that it is imperative for the PM (project manager) to know the unique capabilities of each staff member, and then ensure that each staff member is placed in the position that will make the best use of those capabilities. The PM must then understand what it takes to motivate these individuals to the point that each achieves more than he or she thought possible.

5. Selective Involvement in Project Issues

Effective project managers do not try to do everything themselves. They typically focus on a few strategically important areas, leaving the mass of administrative and technical matters to subordinates. This is most clearly illustrated in the DSMC research interviews, which focused on critical incidents selected by the project managers. Of the 285 critical incidents, over half were concentrated in just four functional areas: contracting (sixty-two), personnel management (forty-two), test and evaluation (thirty-one), and acquisition strategy (i.e., project planning) (twenty-six).

As one Army project manager put it:

You must realize, you can't do everything yourself. People are your most precious asset!

This Air Force colonel clearly reveals his willingness to delegate:

My role in the restructuring was to task the organization, to work with the user and with the contractor to come up with this program. I never got involved with the details. That is not my job.

6. Focus on External Stakeholders

While outstanding project managers craft effective project teams, they also spend considerable time networking with external customers and support organizations. The number of external stakeholders who can potentially impact a project is huge. Thus, project managers must determine who the key players are and what is important to them. One Army project manager commented:

The project manager is always operating outside of his controlled environment. In fact, very seldom is a project manager huddled around with all the people just from his project office.

Another Army project managers stated:

Without cooperation from the large number of people and organizations who make up the acquisition process no project will go forward.

7. Thrive on Relationships and Influence

Since project managers have no formal power over these external stakeholders, they must rely on their ability to cultivate relationships and use influence strategies to achieve their objectives. This Navy project manager traveled overseas not only to solve a fielding problem, but more importantly to develop an ongoing relationship with his customers in the fleet:

I made a trip to Scotland as a damage control effort, if you will, to talk to the squadron people and that kind of thing. To talk to them after having spent a lot of time and being kind of a nuisance to everybody with these modifications which now didn't work. My credibility was zero. I tried to restore our credibility. We really did want to help them out. I think they were surprised to see a four-striped captain come all the way from Washington DC to talk about their problems.

This UK project manager found himself in a very difficult situation on a joint project with the US Navy and used his political savvy to get out of it.

I would tread on people's toes because the US project manager didn't want me speaking directly to his folks who are in the Pentagon, although I couldn't work without that. So I got around that by holding the meetings in the British Embassy and inviting him to come to our "foreign territory." Whatever happened, I would just look for a way around it. It was just—it just became a game actually, of trying to unravel all the pressure groups.

To reverse a potentially devastating budget cut, this Army project manager knew who to involve, at what point and why:

I finally recognized that I needed heavy hitters with more influence and authority than I had, so I set up a meeting with the program executive office, the head of procurement, my staff, an attorney advisor, and the Army's contract policy expert. In other words, I had to go in there and literally stack the deck in terms of influence and independent representatives who would vouch for what I had said.

8. Proactively Gather Information and Insist on Results

The best project managers constantly probe for information and push for results. This project manager used his own questioning technique to insure that information he received was accurate.

At this meeting, I asked the contractor what they knew about the subcontractor status. You know, where precisely are they? What are their plans to do this? With each answer, I would just ask one question, I would just ask one question deeper than that. When they started to stutter, I knew they were in trouble because I shouldn't be able to go that one level deeper and ask a question they can't answer.

Finally, successful project managers must produce results. As this project manager concluded:

Everything you do [as a project manager] has got to be focused on results, results, results.

Relative Importance of the Competencies

The initial DSMC research study (Cullen and Gadeken 1990) was the only one with a large enough interview sample to allow for subgroup comparisons. With the interest in top performers, the research team asked the sponsoring military organizations to identify the very best project managers from those who had been interviewed. An assessment of each project manager by their project team was correlated with the senior rater nominations. This split the group of fifty-two interviewed project managers approximately in half.

Statistical comparisons were then done on the frequency data for each competency (i.e., number of times each competency appeared in the interview transcript). The results of this analysis were that competencies 1, Strong Commitment to a Clear Mission, and 7, Thrive on Relationships and Influence, were demonstrated, with statistical validity more often by the top performing project managers than by their contemporaries. So these competencies were listed in italics in Table 5 to denote their greater importance to effective project leadership.

Validation Surveys

An interesting finding from the DSMC study (Cullen and Gadeken 1990) emerged from the comparison of importance rankings of specific competencies by project managers with ranking from other acquisition professionals (functional managers from different specialty areas such as contracting, budgeting, engineering, and logistics). This comparison is illustrated in Table 6. It is clear that there are some significant differences in the competency rankings between the two groups (as noted by the arrows between the columns). The acquisition professionals (functional managers) considered technical expertise, attention to detail, and creativity (defined as developing novel technical solutions) as far more important than did project managers.

Table 6: Survey Validation of Project Management Competencies

Note: Identical Numbers = Tie Scores

Rank Order of Importance

COMPETENCIES

Project Managers (N = 128)

Other Acq. Prof. (N = 225)

Sense of Ownership/Mission

1

17

Long-Term Perspective

2

6

Managerial Orientation

3

2

Political Awareness

4

21

Optimizing

5

5

Results Orientation

6

8

Systematic Thinking

7

3

Innovativeness/Initiative

8

11

Focus on Excellence

9

9

Action Orientation

10

10

Relationship Development

10

14

Coaches Others

12

12

Proactive Information Gathering

13

15

Strategic Influence

14

23

Creativity

15

3

Self-Control

15

13

Interpersonal Assessment

17

18

Collaborative Influence

18

16

Critical Inquiry

18

24

Positive Expectations

20

24

Technical Expertise

21

1

Interpersonal Sensitivity

22

22

Attention to Detail

22

7

Assertiveness

24

20

Efficiency Orientation

25

18

Directive Influence

26

26

Competitiveness

27

27

On the other hand, project managers rated sense of ownership/mission, political awareness, and strategic influence much higher than functional managers did. An underlying issue emerges from the difference in competency requirements for project managers and functional specialists: the transition from functional specialist to project manager may be conceptually quite difficult. A review of the literature (Gadeken 1986) supports this conclusion, especially for scientists and engineers who currently make up the bulk of defense project managers.




The Frontiers of Project Management Research
The Frontiers of Project Management Research
ISBN: 1880410745
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2002
Pages: 207

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