Tag: leadership

Strategic Leadership Qualities Part 1

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When I think of strategic leadership, particular characteristics stand out that influence the type of leader I would like to be; I will touch briefly on each point.

1) “Walk the talk”—this relates to how real and genuine a leader is, otherwise the ability to lead will diminish due to hypocrisy. A couple examples may help illustrate the point. When a PMO manager or executive states that earned value management is important, yet rarely reviews the data, and worse, never acts on the data, the manager sends a message that is full of “talk” with no “walk”.  Or, when senior managers try to maintain a semblance of governance yet make exceptions to the process, the hypocrisy weakens the governance process.

2) Accountability—a leader not only needs to hold himself/herself accountable in order to walk the talk, but also needs to hold other people accountable. There is a lot to say about accountability, but strategic leadership will drive accountability within the organizations. This is not easy, and requires my third point, backbone.

3) Backbone—refers to the leader’s ability to stay true to their values and decisions in the face of opposition or pressure. Portfolio management is a cross roads of many facets of the business. A good strategic leader may get caught in the cross fire between organizations, but will not back down until problems can be reviewed and resolved.

More to come on strategic leadership…

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Strategic Leadership

Tim Washington Leave a comment
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Leadership differs from management, most of us agree with that. In regards to portfolio management, strategic leadership is critical.  Peter Drucker has an infamous quote about the difference between leadership and management, “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” The distinction between project and portfolio management has also been made with a similar quote, “Project Management is about doing the work right, portfolio management is about doing the right work.” While I wouldn’t minimize the need for project leadership , I would argue that strategic leadership at the portfolio level is critical for making portfolio management sucessful. If we equate the two quotes above, we can see that portfolio management is very much related to effective leadership, because good leaders make sure the right work is getting done.

A lot of articles and books have been written on portfolio management mechanics (“how to”), but very little time has been spent on strategic leadership in relation to portfolio management. In a very general way, we can agree that portfolio management is about doing the right work , but people have to decide what work gets done. Without effective leadership, the right work may not get done (due to pet projects, short-sightedness, etc.).

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Book Review—Death by Meetings by Patrick Lencioni Part 2

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This post is a continuation of the previous book report on Patrick Lencioni’s book, Death by Meetings. He recommended four types of meetings, three of which are briefly discusses in relation to portfolio management.

2) Weekly tactical meeting: these meetings are focused on tactical issues of immediate concern. There should be discipline to this meeting and structural consistency. A quick lightning round allows everyone to share their top two or three priorities for the week. The next component is a review of key metrics without lengthy discussion. The third component is a real-time agenda, not one created prior to the meeting. Disciplined spontaneity is important for those leading the meetings who can allow the meeting to shape itself based on the most urgent matters.

PPM application: this meeting would allow project and program managers to provide quick status and then address current issues affecting their projects.

3) Monthly strategic meetings: allows managers to wrestle with, analyze, and debate important issues that affect the organization. It is important that they occur regularly so that it serves as a parking lot for strategic matters that get brought up in other meetings. “This gives executives confidence to table critical issues knowing that they will eventually be addressed.”

PPM application: These meetings are particularly relevant to the portfolio management team to actually discuss current strategies and provides time for them to develop clearer strategic criteria. These meetings could also be used for longer-range phasing plans for strategic completion.

4) Quarterly off-site: “provides executives an opportunity to regularly step away from the daily, weekly, even monthly issues that occupy their attention, so that they can review the business in a more holistic manner”. These off-sites should include a comprehensive strategy review, team review, personnel review, and even a competitive industry review.

PPM application: this get away allows the portfolio management team adequate time to consider the strategic direction of the organization and develop future goals.

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Book Review—Death by Meetings by Patrick Lencioni Part 1

Tim Washington Leave a comment
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Patrick Lencioni’s book, Death by Meetings, is a great book and relevant to the PPM community.

“Meetings are boring because they lack drama”
“Meetings are ineffective because they lack contextual structure”

Problem #1—Lack of drama

Meetings are interactive and relevant to our lives, yet they usually lack some amount of drama. “When a group of intelligent people come together to talk about issues that matter, it is both natural and productive for disagreement to occur. Resolving these issues is what makes a meeting productive, engaging, and fun.”

PPM application: portfolio management is both fun and exciting because it is the mechanism for accomplishing strategic initiatives. There are always ongoing changes that requires participants to be engaged, strategies to be clarified, priorities to be established and communicated, and projects to be executed. Keeping this view in front of the portfolio management team and project managers will help keep everyone focused.

Problem #2—Lack of Contextual Structure

The basic problem is that too many things are crammed into meetings and often frustrate many people for different reasons. Tactical near-term decisions may get added to the same agenda as longer-term strategic items. Nothing gets the attention it deserves, people don’t get to weigh in sufficiently and/or are not adequately prepared. The problem isn’t to necessarily spend more time in meetings as it is to break down the content for the appropriate meeting. To resolve the contextual structure issue, Lencioni advocates four types of meetings:

1) The daily check-in: this may be relevant for a leadership team or another group that does work closely together. It’s intent is to provide everyone a quick overview of the days events in five minutes or less (approximately).

PPM application: for organizations that are project focused, having such a meeting may help project managers and key team members stay on the same page with each other.

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Welcome to PPM Execution-A New PPM Knowledge Center

Tim Washington Leave a comment
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This website is a new knowledge center for portfolio management practices and tools. It is difficult to find a PPM knowledge center with a single source of good portfolio management information. There are a lot of good sites with good information, but no single site that could be considered a PPM knowledge center. I plan to post links to other websites with good information, active PPM blogs, good articles, white papers, and other information relevant to the PPM community. I would like to make this as useful as possible, and welcome any feedback.

Thank you.

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