APM Project Summer 2021

Cover VERSION

ISSUE 307 SUMMER 2021 £14.50

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THE V TH VO OII C CE E O OF F THE TH E P PROJ ROJ EC T M A ANAGE N AG E M E NT COM CO M M U NIT N IT Y

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THE BIGGER PICTURE

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The voice of the project management community

THE GOOD AND THE GREAT ON HOW PROJECTS WILL SHAPE OUR FUTURE

PLUS

NICK SMALLWOOD

INTERVIEW WITH THE CEO OF THE INFRASTRUCTURE AND PROJECTS AUTHORITY

THE UK’S VACCINE TASKFORCE

NICK ELLIOTT ON WHAT IT TOOK TO MAKE IT HAPPEN

SUMMER 2021 / ISSUE 307

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Welcome VERSION

FROM THE EDITOR

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OK, we can do this

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Rebuilding society, business and the economy in a better way requires the best minds to work together. This summer, after more than a year of being pushed to our limits in every way imaginable, it’s time to stop, recover and make some space to think and contemplate what happens next.

I hope this summer issue of Project might help you find some inspiration and energy to turn your vision into reality.

But more brains are better than one brain, right? So I’ve asked some of those at the top of the project management profession to give their thoughts on what the future of projects might hold; and to share what lasting lessons the pandemic has brought. We’ve also asked those on the frontline of projects to give us their take on where we might be headed.

There’s much food for thought, and a palpable sense of pride and excitement to get on with the job.

If their hard-won lessons don’t motivate you, then perhaps Nick Elliott’s account of leading the UK government’s Vaccine Taskforce might (and don’t forget to listen to his interview with The APM Podcast too). Yet while this issue might include an impressive haul of project movers and shakers, I also wanted to highlight the dynamism of those project professionals who are capitalising on a skill set that can transfer to any sector.

Our ‘sector shifters’ feature showcases those who have made the brave leap into the unknown – and are thriving. If

I’ve asked some of those at the top of the project management profession to give their thoughts on what the future of projects might hold

you’re contemplating doing the same, I recommend you take their advice.

The summer months should also be a time to switch off, so don’t forget to read our recommendations for summer reading and listening to help you reboot. You might also be interested in our behind-the-scenes look at how project professionals at the UK’s TV broadcasters have been critical to enabling the nation’s switch to streaming.

It has been a digital transformation accelerated by COVID-19 – and shows just how much project management is becoming a critical part of every industry, including the media.

As many of the project professionals I’ve spoken to over this bombshell of a year have told me, it has been the collaborative human endeavour that has been the most inspiring and rewarding side of work. And if there’s one thing that leads to project success, it’s getting the people side of things right, so if you want to improve your collaboration skills or learn how to manage multigenerational teams better, flick to our Peer to Peer section. As a Gen Xer, it was an eye-opening read…

Emma De Vita is editor of Project

Editor Emma De Vita emma.devita @thinkpublishing.co.uk Managing editor Mike Hine Group art director Jes Stanfield Senior sales executive Samantha Tkaczyk 020 3771 7198 samantha.tkaczyk @thinkpublishing.co.uk Account director Kieran Paul

The views expressed in Project are not necessarily those of APM, the publisher or its agents, and they do not accept responsibility for any solicited material, or for the views of contributors, or for actions arising from any claims made in any advertisements or inserts appearing in this journal.

This publication (or any part thereof) may not be reproduced in any form without express and written permission from the editor. © APM 2021 APM, Ibis House, Regent Park, Summerleys Road, Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire HP27 9LE, United Kingdom apm.org.uk Tel (UK): 0845 458 1944 Tel (Int): +44 1844 271 640 Cover price: £14.50 Annual subscription fee: £58 (UK); £68.20 (Europe); £79 (international) PROJECT (ISSN 0957-7033) is published by the Association for Project Management in association with Think Media Group, 20 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JW Tel: 020 3771 7200 thinkpublishing.co.uk

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CONTENTS

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FROM BROADCASTERS TO BOOMERS, THIS ISSUE OF PROJECT AT A GLANCE

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6 Unusual cargo Big picture: removing a decommissioned gas platform

8 Levelling up ART

What the government’s announcements could mean for projects

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Emissions targets How is the UK doing on its carbon commitments ahead of COP26?

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Data: climate change What APM research reveals about the profession’s climate change journey

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Entrepreneurship Priya Lakhani on the project skills that drove her AI business’s success

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PERSPECTIVES

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Inclusivity Cultivating different leadership styles to create more collaborative teams

Airbourne Lens ; Claire Wood ; Mike Wilkinson; Alamy; Getty; Moviestills

15 Project success

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Why you need to hone your people skills to achieve better outcomes

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Hubristic leaders Beware the leader who doesn’t listen and thinks they are infallible

17 Debbie Dore A fond farewell from APM’s outgoing chief executive

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6 FEATURES QQQQQQQ

19 The bigger picture What are the key lessons as we rebuild and face difficult challenges post-pandemic?

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Sector shifters Lessons from project professionals who have jumped between industries

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The big interview Project meets Nick Smallwood, CEO of the Infrastructure and Projects Authority

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UK Vaccine Taskforce How Nick Elliot led the government programme to secure and deliver COVID-19 vaccines

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Broadcasting How project professionals have spearheaded the sector’s digital transformation

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Eddie Obeng Why screen-free days are the way forward

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Contents, 1

62 50 PEER TO PEER QQQQ

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Project sponsorship How to be highly effective in the role of project sponsor

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Knowledge management Tapping into the valuable potential residing in your employees’ heads

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Q&A with Susanne Madsen Achieving the right balance in your project leadership style

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Collaboration It’s not as straightforward as before – but collaboration can be more powerful than ever

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Multigenerational teams From boomers to Gen Z – each generation needs a careful, bespoke management approach

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Chartered The latest additions to the Register of Chartered Project Professionals

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Rising star Flying high and fighting sexism with young professional Emma Regulski

42 19 “I found myself identifying risks that were blatant to me, but which nobody else saw because they’d all been tunnel-visioned into a certain way of working”

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Beyond the job How project methodologies apply to scuba-diving

OFFLINE QQQQQQ

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PM meets pop culture Why Netflix’s The Dig might provide some answers to those nightmare project scenarios

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Books and podcasts Unwind on your summer staycation with some insightful reading and listening

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CRUISING DOWN THE RIVER The Firth of Forth is witness to one of the more unusual cargoes to travel along its waters

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decommissioned gas platform sails under the Forth Road Bridge on a barge after being removed from the East Irish Sea. The DP4 platform, which used to be operated by Spirit Energy, was removed by the world’s largest vessel, Allseas’ Pioneering Spirit, in April before being taken back to shore in Rosyth. The full platform

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weighed ~6,000 tons, and the cargo barge pictured here, Allseas’ Iron Lady, is 200m long and 57m wide.

Donald Martin, senior project manager at Spirit Energy, told Project that: “This programme has been a privilege to work on over the last four years. The multi-faceted technical and environmental challenges

encountered, including with legacy infrastructure preparations, removal and recycling, have required several industry firsts to be overcome. The most fulfilling part has been seeing all the companies involved innovating together to solve these issues, then witnessing the end result taking care of itself.”

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NEWS ANALYSIS

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Levelling up: An opportunity to deliver better projects

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The 2020 Spending Review and 2021 Queen’s Speech redoubled the government’s commitment to a ‘levelling up’ agenda ART

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fter such a challenging year, there has never been a better time to unite and level up the country,” said Neil O’Brien MP, the prime minister’s new ‘levelling up adviser’ at the May announcement of a white paper on the policy. “It’s absolutely crucial that we bring opportunity to every single part of the UK by making sure our spending, tax, investment and regeneration priorities bring about meaningful change.”

The government defines ‘levelling up’ as “improving living standards, growing the private sector and increasing and spreading opportunity… [alongside] work being undertaken to repair the damage done by Covid to public services, with backlogs in hospitals and courts prioritised alongside school catch-ups and jobs”.

Boris Johnson committed to the idea in his first speech as prime minister in 2019, and has made the policy a key slogan for his post-Brexit, and now post-pandemic, vision for Britain. But what does this mean for projects in real terms?

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Local projects can shine Chancellor Rishi Sunak has now published the 23-page prospectus for the £4.8bn Levelling Up Fund announced in the 2020 Spending Review. A sub-£5bn fund isn’t huge in infrastructure terms – although Sunak is at pains to contextualise it against a government allocation of £100bn for capital spending in 2021–22, and part of £600bn in gross public-sector investment over the next five years.

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Local stakeholders and their political representatives will bid for funds to spruce up community infrastructure – from bus lanes and libraries to heritage sites and town centres. The prospectus makes clear that these should be visible projects designed to boost communities. They will be green-lit by HM Treasury, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and the Department for Transport – with the aim of reducing siloed decision-making and authorisations.

For project managers and contractors with a strong local profile, this might create new opportunities, with a need – on more significant local projects, anyway – for project planning in the pitch stage, then effective delivery against local stakeholder objectives. In theory, both major contractors and smaller project consultancies could galvanise local stakeholders to support their own projects – lobbying MPs and councils, pulling together a bid and getting the go-ahead from Whitehall.

The first round of funding will prioritise “smaller transport projects that make a genuine difference to local areas; town centre and high street regeneration; and support for

Ultimately, any sustained programme of new projects – whether large or small – will increase demand for project management expertise

maintaining and expanding the UK’s world-leading portfolio of cultural and heritage assets”. But bids leaning into the net-zero emissions target and the post-pandemic ‘Build Back Better’ concept are likely to get extra Brownie points, too.

Focus on the north and west Ultimately, any sustained programme of new projects – whether large or small – will increase demand for project management expertise. With a focus on the north and west of the country, project managers in those regions can expect more work on their doorsteps – even if levelling up delivers relatively modest levels of new investment in major projects.

Transport for the North was established in 2016, with the aim to transform transport connectivity across the north of England. Now that the government has laid out its levelling-up agenda to boost national productivity through infrastructure post-pandemic, the organisation’s work is set to really step up.

“Transport connectivity has a phenomenally important role to play,” explained Tim Foster, interim strategy and programme director at Transport for the North, at the Major Projects Association event ‘Levelling Up: How Major Projects are Tackling Social and Economic Inequalities’ in April.

“That’s what we are there to do: set the scene and the long-term vision for the way in which connectivity – for people, businesses, freight and logistics – can really transform the

NA2, 1 Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced the UK Levelling Up Fund worth £4.8bn

economic fortunes of the north of England.”

Good transport links provide many benefits to a region, Foster explained. They can boost equality by creating greater access to jobs and education. And they can drive economic growth, as businesses move into wellconnected areas. Rail infrastructure also contributes to reaching net-zero targets, with fewer people travelling by car.

The wider agenda Levelling up creates an important challenge about coordination and the effective delivery of projects. “If funding mechanisms give the green light to a raft of projects at once, will there be sufficient consideration of how the different schemes inter-relate?” mused APM’s then head of external affairs, David Thomson, in a March blog. “There will be huge opportunities

to create benefit for communities, but maximising them – and minimising the potential for clashing priorities – will pose real challenges. Delivering real value for the country will require a coherent view from the government of the overall picture, with a focus on long-term benefits. Central to that, I would suggest, will be the need to deliver effectively ‘on the ground’.”

But that means having the right senior delivery and project professionals ready and raring to go, but as things currently stand, the UK is lacking. Government must be urged to identify and invest in the right skills. Investing in people, as well as material resources, will create the skills necessary to deliver projects now and in the future. A welcome step is the Infrastructure and Projects Authority’s recent launch of its Project Academy, as part of a package of measures to improve capacity and capability in project delivery – but meeting the current level of ambition will take time.

Policies such as levelling up depend on the delivery, efficiency and quality of projects that make a clear and visible contribution to people’s lives. But failing to embed a stronger project management culture in companies, communities and government for the benefit of future development would also be a tragically missed opportunity.

THE WIDER LEVELLING-UP AGENDA

Alamy

The Levelling Up Fund is just part of a bigger national regeneration picture. It sits alongside, rather than within, the new National Infrastructure Strategy and is separate to the new Leeds-based UK Infrastructure Bank, which will invest in both public and private projects. The slate of government programmes designed to ‘level up’ UK regions includes: UK COMMUNITY RENEWAL FUND £220m available ahead of the launch of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund in 2022, to compensate for the disappearance of EU structural funds.

It will invest in skills, enterprise and employment.

UK COMMUNITY OWNERSHIP FUND Helping communities buy assets in support of social wellbeing.

PLAN FOR JOBS Wrapping up Jobcentre Plus, Youth Hubs, Restart and Kickstart.

FREEPORTS Regional hubs for global trade and investment.

UK INFRASTRUCTURE BANK Financing for local authority and private infrastructure projects around climate change and regional economic growth – including advisory support for

project development and delivery.

TOWNS FUND £3.6bn for regeneration of deprived towns.

Along with other measures to support ‘building back better’ and the need to transition to a lowercarbon economy, the prospects for project work look positive. Time will tell if the slogans will translate to stage gates.

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It’s a fair COP

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World leaders will meet in Glasgow in November for UN climate change summit COP26. The UK has set tough targets for reducing carbon emissions and otherwise ‘greening’ its energy sector. So, how’s it doing?

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he UK’s commitment to net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050 is going to require a mammoth effort. Front and centre will be the project managers taking green energy initiatives from concept to delivery, often with complex and innovative engineering at play, and factoring in a range of external challenges, from regulation and financing to at-scale coordination of generation, distribution and consumption of energy.

But we have come a long way since 1990, when the International Panel on Climate Change issued its first report on the impact of humans on the greenhouse effect. The UK’s GHG emissions in 2020 were 51 per cent below 1990 levels.

Wind at their back In electricity generation, the biggest change since 1990 has been the virtual collapse of coal as a source of power – from about 65 per cent in 1990 to less than three per cent in 2020. That represents about 40 per cent of the reduction in the UK’s CO2 emissions over the past 30 years. While that period has also seen a massive rise in the use of gas-fired power plants, gas is less carbon intensive than coal.

But the big win has been the emergence of renewables, from negligible levels in 1990 – around two per cent of electricity – to more than 40 per cent in 2020. Virtually every class of renewable electricity generation has seen rapid growth over the past 15 years.

Wind is a perfect example. The UK government required power distributors to source more renewable

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energy as early as 1989, with its NonFossil Fuel Obligation, leading directly to investment in the first proper wind farms. But even in 2008, the UK’s wind-generating capacity was just 3MW – for a total contribution of about 1.5 per cent of national electricity use.

Yet by 2019, nearly 23,950MW was available to feed the grid – and wind alone accounted for 21 per cent of electricity use. The UK government has used both subsidy and regulation to encourage wind-farm development, both onshore and offshore.

With wind, the biggest challenges are often not in engineering (although modern offshore turbines are titanic in scale – see box), but environmental and regulatory considerations. UK offshore is a great example. It was only in 1999 that the Crown Estate (which effectively owns near-shore sea areas) agreed to guidelines for facility development, and the first round of experimental offshore wind farms didn’t feel the breeze until 2003.

Slow progress in this first phase, coupled with growing concern about climate change, pushed the government to take a more structured approach to the industrialisation of offshore wind, creating blocks of shallow water with minimal impact on wildlife and shipping for projects to bid on. This succeeded in propelling bigger and more intensive installations funded by the private sector.

“For every goal and commitment, there will be countless professionals needed to deliver across many industries”

Skills and finance But smarter legislation is only half the battle. “Laws don’t deliver projects; people do,” said APM president Sue Kershaw in April. “For every goal and commitment, there will be countless projects and professionals needed to deliver across many different industries.

Only with significant investment and focus on project skill sets will we be able to support the proper inception, delivery and completion of these projects that will help deliver these ambitious goals and timelines for the environment.”

Building on the success of existing projects is critical. Retained project expertise will make faster roll-out of scaled-up wind farms much easier. But it’s also crucial we don’t fall into the trap of over-specialisation. Because, while solar arrays are less effective in the UK than in Spain, for example, other forms of renewable power need to be part of the picture. Anaerobic digesters, for example, will never be a significant share of generating capacity – but they are local (reducing transmission costs) and help manage other forms of waste.

And whether it’s new nuclear to provide baseload provision, fresh takes on tidal power or experimental technologies such as hydrogen or fusion

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The targets remain tough, but the tools and technologies to achieve them seem within our grasp

reactors, we’ll need more, and more knowledgeable, project managers.

Brush up your networking More efficient management of energy sources is a relatively small contributor to falling CO2 emissions. But having a smaller and cleaner fossil fuel industry has delivered about 10 per cent of the UK’s decline in CO2 emissions.

This could be bumped up by projects to improve distribution efficiency. At the moment, around seven per cent of electricity is lost in transmission, and projects to build smarter grids and more local generating and storage capacity could be a boon in reducing these losses. The National Grid has set itself a target to be carbon neutral by 2033 – meaning all electricity generation and transmission will account for zero emissions, an aggressive and optimistic objective.

Consumption The other big contributor to falling carbon emissions is energy consumption. Cleaner industry, controls on landfill GHG emissions, more efficient industrial processes and general household energy efficiency are all driving down the UK’s impact on climate change, despite a growing economy and population. Energy-efficient homes, greater use of electric vehicles and changing social behaviours (less

commuting post-pandemic, for instance) will play a role. It’s a reminder for project managers that coordination of programmes is critical – dovetailing onsite project sustainability, contribution to wider climate goals and aligning with wider societal changes.

“The Committee on Climate Change’s Net Zero Report includes a portfolio of projects and programmes to deliver on the [climate] commitment, a combination of known technologies and

step-change projects,” said Arup’s Rob Leslie-Carter in an APM presentation.

“And as well as energy generation, distribution and use, it’s also about managing people and societal change.

“Project managers enable the conditions to deliver net-zero projects,” he continued. “We’re integrators – not just rolling out low-carbon technologies, but also helping tackle systemic challenges.” Leslie-Carter picks up many different roles for project managers to influence net zero – from funding and approvals to strategic priorities, choice of projects you seek out and monitoring project sustainability. That applies as much to green energy projects as to the broad slate of programme sustainability.

Energy transition is now an unstoppable force. The targets remain tough, but the tools and technologies to achieve them seem within our grasp.

Translating vision, technology and investment into action and tangible change is precisely what project managers exist to do. And there’s no more important change than a sustainable future.

Wind: Massive turbines to maximise output A more structured approach to planning consents for wind farms over the past 10 years has seen a huge increase in generating capacity.

But sites are still limited in space; and the removal of the Renewables Obligation subsidy scheme in 2017 meant that, for onshore wind in particular, maximising the output (and therefore revenues) of each installation became a must.

And with wind, bigger is better. Blades covering a bigger area are more efficient; blade tips reaching higher benefit from more consistent wind. For project managers, then, familiarity with the logistics of massive turbine roll-out is a must.

Three companies dominate turbine manufacture: Siemens, Vestas and GE. Vestas has a 15MW prototype scheduled for mass production in 2024. Its V263 has blades 115.5m long and a turbine capable of 80GWh per year, enough to power 20,000 homes.

Offshore is a UK success story, and Boris Johnson has called for a 1,000 per cent increase in wind-generating capacity by 2030.

Onshore projects face fewer technical challenges (although increased regulatory hurdles) – but with the scale of the hardware coming off the production line, there’s plenty of project management work to come.

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A unique position

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FACING THE CLIMATE CHALLENGE

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New APM research reveals the urgency felt among younger project managers

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Climate campaigner Greta Thunberg is a likely influence on entrants to the profession

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ith the impact of the pandemic, some otherwise critical issues have slipped temporarily from the top of the profession’s priority list. Climate change is one of those concerns. Yet, as the world begins to recover from the pandemic, many in the project field are seeing a chance to press the reset button, according to APM’s report Future Trends: Facing the Climate Challenge, which builds on the findings of its latest Salary and Market Trends Survey.

That survey suggested that project professionals are seeing the drive to reduce carbon as key to shaping the post-pandemic world: 55 per cent of respondents said their organisation now has a strategy for reaching net zero. Indeed, one key learning from the pandemic is that it really does pay to be prepared. As such, the focus on climate change is likely to see a major tick upwards this year.

It appears this focus would be welcome among project professionals

– and notably more so among younger practitioners. Nearly half (49 per cent) of 18- to 24-year-olds and 44 per cent of 25- to 34-year-olds rate it as significant – compared to just 36 per cent of those aged 55–64.

The ‘Greta’ effect This trend may be because climate issues have been mainstream news for a greater proportion of young professionals’ lives, plus the fact they’ll also have to spend more of their lives dealing with the consequences. They may also be more likely to be influenced by campaigner Greta Thunberg.

Female professionals seem more likely to recognise the climate challenge than their male peers. Just over half (55 per cent) of women aged 18–24 consider it significant. In terms of sectors, it’s among project professionals in two very different areas where concern about climate change is greatest: construction and energy (54 per cent); and the arts (53 per cent).

It’s now consensus that the world has entered the decisive decade for efforts to achieve net zero if we’re to stand any chance of averting a global climate catastrophe. Yet this requires working out how best to coordinate the rapid delivery of projects and programmes that will contribute to climate goals.

It means finding the most effective way to connect governments, industry and other agents of delivery. And the targets required by the climate change challenge demand a hugely ambitious approach to building the capacity to deliver the change.

The latest APM salary survey suggested that several key issues were blocking the project profession’s progress on climate issues, including competing priorities (36 per cent of respondents), financial and investment restrictions (33 per cent), and a lack of knowledge and awareness (27 per cent).

It’s clear, then, that the project profession will have its work cut out in the next decade – yet it is in a unique position to make a critical contribution to the climate fight.

O Download Future Trends: Facing the Climate Challenge at apm.org.uk

ARE PROJECT PROFESSIONALS PRIMED FOR THE BATTLE? The climate challenge requires the working world to adopt a greater focus on project skills, not just the STEM skills typically associated with low-carbon projects.

But it seems project practitioners aren’t necessarily feeling fit to drive the change. Just eight per cent of APM’s

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survey respondents said they consider themselves ‘to a large extent’ equipped to tackle net zero challenges in their projects, with 28 per cent equipped ‘to some extent’. Eighteen per cent consider themselves ‘not at all’ ready.

Confidence is highest among those working

in organisations with a net-zero strategy. Here, 51 per cent felt well equipped, compared with just 17 per cent in those sectors that lacked such a strategy.

While the findings highlight the value in organisations taking a strong, proactive stance on climate change, they

also point to the power of professional development in a world where project delivery is becoming evermore complex: those who have achieved Chartered Project Professional status were markedly more confident (56 per cent) than their nonchartered counterparts (35 per cent).

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What entrepreneurs need Priya Lakhani, Power of Projects keynote speaker, on the project skills that drove her AI business’s success

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arrister turned entrepreneur Priya Lakhani is founder and CEO of Century Tech, an artificial intelligence (AI) education technology company.

She told Project how project managers have become key to the business’s fast growth. Out of a team of 80, the scaleup now employs four project managers.

Complementary skills An entrepreneur reaches for the stars, but it is the project manager who develops and implements a business development team’s innovative ideas, she explained. While her team might have an ideas-filled initial conversation with a potential partner, it will be the second conversation, when one of their project managers comes along to capture all the important parts of the conversation about what might be delivered and create a critical path, that is pivotal.

“They add structure to what is otherwise a mad conversation,” Lakhani explained. “It suits us as a scale-up that the team will get involved at the beginning of a conversation with a partner so that expectations are met on both sides. You are then much more likely to have a happier relationship, because you’ve got that structure around a particular project. If they are in-house project managers, they will have executed a project that is quite similar, and they bring a great deal of knowledge and a level of realism. That’s really important, because it de-risks your project – it adds a layer of certainty.

“For entrepreneurs, it is a fantastic complementary skill set: you’ve got your business development team who like to innovate and then you’ve got somebody

“Every company is a technology company, so it is up to everybody to understand the technology” who can say, ‘Well, let me show you what it actually looks like in practice’.

You can then resource up in advance so that you don’t just sign a contract and then think: how do I now execute this on time?”

other areas where it might be applied to make the customer even happier. If you don’t understand it, you can’t possibly do that. It’s about understanding the technology, because it will be applied at some point within a project you will do.”

Must-have attributes

What might the future hold?

Lakhani expects project managers to have an open mind and an ability to work with fast-thinking ideas people.

This must be complemented by “an absolutely meticulous methodology”.

With the accelerated use of new technology and AI, Lakhani said project professionals need to adapt.

“Every person must understand this technology. Every company is a technology company, so it is up to everybody to understand the technology. If you don’t, you can’t fully think about the challenges posed by the technology, and where there is further opportunity.

“As a project manager, you might be executing something that someone else has come up with, but it is a really good idea to be able to understand the technology so that you can think of

While Lakhani admitted it is difficult to make predictions about future trends due to the pandemic, she says that: “Every project manager would have learnt a lot in the last year, because their typical practices and processes would have changed. The last year has taught us that we need to adapt to any situation that is thrown at us, and there are some project managers who have used it as an opportunity to enjoy the ability to adapt.” Does she have any advice for project managers seeking a career in an entrepreneurial business? “The pandemic has proven that technology is crucial, so just don’t take your finger off – make sure you understand it, because it is crucial to everyone’s role,” she said.

O Visit apm.org.uk to view on-demand content from the Power of Projects conference

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BECOME AN INCLUSIVE LEADER No leader has all the answers, says Teri Okoro , so now is the time to cultivate different leadership styles to create collaborative teams

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New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern has a reputation for being an empathetic, inclusive leader

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Teri Okoro ChPP is an APM Fellow, co-chair of APM’s People SIG and an inclusion expert

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The past year has demonstrated how critical leadership is when delivering change in a VUCA context. The trend of placing ‘soft’ skills on par with technical ones in delivering change is also transitioning into a paradigm shift. Despite leadership long being considered an essential competence for project professionals, its constancy nevertheless obscures variance over time in the skills and attributes considered as good practice.

As project professionals, what is our understanding of the leadership competence today? Is it reflective of leadership more generally? Does it emanate from the current APM Body of Knowledge and focus solely on projects?

Or is it a hybrid of the two perspectives?

Selecting a leadership style to suit the project is a mantra today, but is your leadership style still largely onedimensional? Conveying a compelling project vision effectively to inspire and enable others’ buy-in requires appropriately developed communication skills. Recognising that people deliver projects demands a leadership approach that builds trust to benefit collaboration and team working.

All these leadership skills require listening to and reading a vast array of people and contexts to respond effectively with integrity and authenticity. Regardless of job title, we all need to demonstrate leadership, particularly in challenging contexts.

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Organisations and teams built on a foundation of inclusive leadership thrive in good times and bad Leadership today requires knowledge of varying leadership styles and when to deploy them; of team members and wider stakeholders and how to successfully engage them; and of the project context and strategic and delivery approaches. It requires knowledge of ourselves, our strengths and limitations. It also requires open and honest communication, sharing information to enable informed choices by all. Appropriate and altered behaviour aligned to knowledge, and building necessary relationships, are also elements of leadership.

With collaboration being fundamental, what constant elements of leadership should run through a project or programme when we are urged to alter our style to suit the context? Proven practices are more essential than ever as we hone and adjust our leadership skills

Too often we view the world from our own perspective – an implicit bias linked to upbringing, role models and previous work cultures

while creating contexts to generate the best from project teams.

Project leaders’ perspectives and lived experiences were prioritised in a 2017 APM research paper by Sarah Coleman and Professor Mike Bourne that identified five headings to conceptualise project leadership and eight ‘project leadership survival skills’. Two years later, the APM Body of Knowledge 7th edition defined leadership as “establishing vision and direction, to influence and align others towards a common purpose, and to empower and inspire people to achieve success”.

More recently, evolving practice has visualised what good leadership is and how to achieve it more collaboratively and inclusively.

Collaboration is often used interchangeably with being inclusive, which can be problematic. Wider leadership approaches today increasingly view inclusion strategically, underpinned by a range of processes and behaviours.

Collaboration, on the other hand, is somewhat narrower – working with someone to produce something.

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The concept of inclusive leadership, embracing people, approaches, mindsets and behaviours, is a proactive thread linking project strategy, delivery and relationships. No longer about ‘me’ or ‘us’, it catapults ‘them’ and ‘others’ to the core.

As we cope with an altered context, the extensive benefits of greater inclusion cannot be overstated. No leader has all the answers – making this our starting point demands an element of humility alongside an altered mindset.

Directional leadership styles often come to the fore during a crisis, as anything else may appear counter-intuitive.

Organisations and teams built on a foundation of inclusive leadership thrive in good times and bad. Beyond an altered starting point, a further component of inclusive leadership is empowering and drawing on the voices and strengths of all the team and wider stakeholders. Countless studies have demonstrated that psychological safety is key to unlocking innovative capability. Harnessing the capability of diversity also creates a sense of feeling valued in others, but requires emotional and cultural intelligence. How well developed is yours?

Too often we view the world from our own perspective – an implicit bias linked to upbringing, role models and previous team and work cultures.

Inclusive relationships and leadership require objectivity in acknowledging this, greater empathy for others, deep listening, more meaningful engagement and different behaviours that are perhaps unfamiliar or may even initially appear risky.

Cognisant of our individual limitations, greater challenges today, unseen gaps of groupthink and the numerous benefits possible from more inclusive working, why is inclusivity not a greater constant within project teams and leadership? As project professionals, we are altering our mindsets on the significance of soft skills. Are we ready for a further paradigm shift – more inclusive collaboration and transitioning into inclusive leaders?

WHY PEOPLE SKILLS LEAD TO PROJECT SUCCESS Good people skills only come through experience, argues David Eggleton, so be sure to give your people the chance to improve As part of the UK’s post-pandemic recovery strategy, the chancellor has pledged £5.6bn for accelerated infrastructure projects. However, project professionals are expected to deliver successful outcomes across progressively more complex, dynamic and novel conditions, when historically as few as 20 per cent of projects wholly meet their planned objectives.

Against this background, APM commissioned me and associate professor Nicholas Dacre to carry out research into how we now define project success.

The research team and our steering group strongly believe that projects are fundamentally about people. Guided by the academic literature, we examined the thematic role of people, processes and broader principles as dynamic conditions for project success. We defined people skills as encompassing communication, emotional intelligence, leadership and attitudes to problem-solving.

From our survey, what emerged most strongly was the centrality of people skills for achieving project success. Ninety-seven per cent of respondents indicated that people skills were either important or very important as a contributor to project success. This made it by far the most important dynamic condition according to our respondents.

So how can project professionals develop people skills? Obviously, it isn’t possible to put any colleague on a training course and have them suddenly emerge as individuals with perfect soft skills.

You must be innovative when designing and It isn’t possible to engaging with people skills training courses. put any colleague on For example, role play has its place and can a training course and be very valuable. But there’s nothing quite have them suddenly like experience to develop the skills and to emerge with perfect embrace new innovative ideas. soft skills This can also be quite a personal experience. What kind of leader do you want to be? Which leaders do you admire and wish to emulate? You need to find opportunities to provide more junior colleagues with that practical experience. But try to make sure they’re recognised roles and any unresolved challenges won’t permanently affect their career.

No one wants to take unnecessary risks for training purposes, but perhaps you have a new iteration of a project where an experienced colleague can provide mentorship. Such training won’t necessarily be for everyone; some people won’t want to step away from the workbench into these types of roles, and that’s okay too. Provide them with a technical pathway so they can advance their careers while keeping their tacit knowledge where it’s most valuable.

Dr David Eggleton is a lecturer in project management at the University of Sussex and co-author, with associate professor Nicholas Dacre, of APM’s forthcoming project success research report

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Rita Trehan is a business transformation expert, founder of Dare Worldwide Consultancy and co-author of Too Proud to Lead: How Hubris Can Destroy Effective Leadership and What to Do About It

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Hubris evokes Greek tragedy and ancient myths of heroes and kings who destroy themselves through pride. But it is as relevant today as it ever was – in business as well as politics. And businesses concerned with surviving and thriving must be vigilant to it.

It is important to make a distinction. Hubris is not ‘just’ pride or arrogance. It is the kind of extreme pride and arrogance that arises when someone has had past successes and no longer thinks they are capable of being wrong. Though it seems obvious that this is not a desired quality in any leader, our culture has historically celebrated the single-minded person who goes it alone, making tough decisions themselves and commanding respect – or even fear – from their subordinates. Examples from recent history include former WeWork CEO Adam Neumann and Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick (pictured, right). They were indulged far longer than seems reasonable because of our cultural celebration of ‘the visionary leader’.

Our culture has historically celebrated the single-minded person

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But hubris is antithetical to effective leadership because it is all-consuming.

Hubristic leaders make decisions because they have made the right decisions before and, believing themselves infallible, increasingly isolate themselves from others, refusing to accept perspectives that contradict or challenge their own.

Hubristic leaders thus make poor choices and overreach, since they believe they are capable of achieving much more than they can. Their isolation only amplifies their lack of self-awareness. By refusing to accept and celebrate competing views, to challenge their own instincts and to value the opinions of others for their own sake, they slide into their own reality, guaranteeing failure – if not immediately, then certainly in the long run.

creative conflict is nurtured and the team is empowered to speak honestly and challenge the leadership, the seeds of hubris do not have the opportunity to grow. It is also vitally important that leaders consciously reflect on what their function is: not to serve themselves, but to serve the business [or project – Ed].

This will encourage them to measure themselves against the standards set by that business: its values, vision and purpose. And, given the horror stories of recent years, it is also worthwhile for leaders to bear in mind how swiftly hubristic leaders fall from grace, and the often irreversible damage they do to their business and its people in the process. Has Uber ever really recovered from the allegations of Travis Kalanick’s sexual impropriety?

All this raises a question: what makes a good leader in 2021? First, good leaders are humble because of their successes. They make themselves vulnerable to encourage a plurality of views to be heard. They nurture talent.

They stay true to their purpose. And they understand that collaboration is more effective than competition. If they reflect that in how they work, their culture will flourish.

Hubris develops insidiously.

Hubristic leaders often justify their present decisions by reference to their past successful ones. But there are still subtle indications that a leader might be becoming hubristic. They may increasingly belittle, ignore or reject the opinions of others. They might collaborate less, siloing themselves.

They may create conditions in which employees see themselves as competitors, rather than members of the same team. They may involve fewer and fewer people in the decisionmaking process or surround themselves with ‘yes’ types who never challenge the things they say. They may thwart attempts to instil a wider culture of questioning or debate.

But despite the fact that hubris often creeps up on successful leaders, it can be prevented by putting in place processes and a structure that encourages selfawareness. By proactively Hubristic leaders cause lasting reputational damage to businesses creating a culture in which

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A FOND FAREWELL AS EXCITING TIMES LIE AHEAD

Debbie Dore is APM’s outgoing chief executive

As I prepare to say my goodbyes before handing over to a new chief executive, it is inevitably a time of reflection, but also excitement about what is to come for both APM and the project profession.

When I joined APM, the prospect of becoming chartered still seemed a long way off despite the efforts of many to ensure it happened, and outside of the profession projects only appeared to get airtime when they failed to meet expectations.

However, from day one, there was a real passion among all those engaged with APM internally and externally about the power and importance of projects – and that was inspiring.

The passion for delivering successful projects is the common theme around which many different views come together, and I have welcomed the willingness to share experiences, the honesty around the challenges faced and the relentless desire to improve.

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Our growing profile Being awarded chartered status in 2017 and launching the Chartered Project Professional (ChPP) standard in 2018 have made a big difference, and we need to thank those with the foresight and determination to make these things happen. They have given the profession a confidence and belief, not just for those who

have become chartered, but in the overall standing and importance of what we do as a profession. As the 50th anniversary of APM approaches and we continue to expand our learning in the seventh edition of the APM Body of Knowledge, people have started to recognise that this is a profession with a history and one with an increasing opportunity to deliver benefit to society. It will always be a tough business to be in, as we are asked to push boundaries and deliver change in challenging times, but the potential for doing good remains. As sustainability is built into the heart of delivering projects, the opportunity to bring about lasting change is enormous.

Seizing the opportunity There are so many things I am proud of that have happened in my time at APM: the increase in members; the impressive project management apprentices embarking on their career; the significant improvement in diversity and inclusivity; and the opportunity for our seasoned professionals to achieve the recognition of being a ChPP, sometimes very late in their career.

Our events programme has continued to inspire and enthuse, and internally we have grown as an organisation, making APM a great place to work.

The last year has tested us all, but it has also put a spotlight on what the profession does well and how important a role it can play. Delivering such challenging programmes as the vaccine development and roll-out, the businesses that switched focus almost overnight to design and build hospital ventilators, the implementation of the furlough scheme – all showed that,

Industrial giants like Airbus lent their resources to meet the huge challenge of ventilator delivery

The last year has tested us all, but it has also put a spotlight on what the profession does well and how important a role it can play with a clear focus, there is much that can be delivered. This puts us in such a strong position moving forward, but we need to seize the opportunity, adapt our approach and make the most of what technology can deliver in order to be a profession fit for the future – and one that inspires a diverse workforce to be a part of it.

Thank you With the support of the APM Board, the staff and all of you, APM has come through this year in a strong position, with an increase in members and significant progress made in transitioning to a digital environment. Over 12,000 candidates sat an APM qualification in the last 12 months on a system that wasn’t live at the start of lockdown, enabling candidates to progress, our training providers to keep working and our revenue to be protected.

I’d like to thank each and every one of you for your engagement with APM. There is much more to come and greater success to be achieved, and that passion for projects that runs through all of you will, I am sure, be valued enormously by my successor.

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As we emerge blinking into a world profoundly affected by COVID-19, what lessons will we bring with us as we rebuild and face difficult future challenges? Project management has never been so central to the future success of business, society and government. What might the future hold?

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roject has gathered some of the great and the good from the world of project management to reflect on what they’ve learnt since the pandemic. Over the next eight pages, they share their thoughts on why projects are more important than ever, and how they can be

managed in a better way. As we edge towards a life that closer resembles pre-pandemic times, we hope their food for thought will inspire you to rethink the practices and ideas that are incorporated into everyday project life. Could it be new ways of collaborating? Encouraging a more

democratic approach to running projects? Or faster decision-making and agility?

However, views from the top are only part of the picture. We also invited those working on the frontline of projects to share what they have learnt and what the future might hold.

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Debbie Lewis APM chair and director of strategic architecture programmes, BT

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echnology is now woven into almost every aspect of our lives.

Communications technology is at the core of this evolution and is itself transforming. We are moving from an era when bandwidth and ubiquity were the drivers of communications technology change to one where reliability, latency, trust and personalisation are the focuses. The customers of technology and its capability are also changing, not just in terms of human demographics, but also because machines are now in the mix.

We now have expectations of instant digital gratification, wherever we are and whatever device we are using. In fact, we are indifferent to the technology and really don’t care if it’s a fixed communications network or a mobile one, or what device we’re using. We want the same capability in all cases and we want to move seamlessly between devices; it’s a world expecting continuous connectivity. And if we’re a machine in the internet of things, we need scale; millions of machines connected in a super reliable, super secure mesh. Machines that sense each other over national distances, orchestrate their activity, are intelligent, and learn and adapt.

How can we succeed in our project practice in this environment?

The opportunities are many: new tools for virtual working, automation, artificial intelligence, data mining and new ways to learn. I have no doubt that our professional practice can benefit greatly from this technologydriven change. What we need to do is adapt in as proactive a manner as possible. APM has a key role in enabling this, helping us identify the ways to adapt, providing the resources for the learning and the forum for mutual support. However, as individuals we also have a responsibility to be open to the new, to want to grasp the opportunities and to work together on realising their benefits. The foundations of ‘traditional’ project practice remain strong, but we must explore and adopt new ones in order to remain effective.

The challenges lie in our professional skills: our ability to see simplicity in complexity and focus others; our ability to lead through times of ambiguity; and our skills in understanding and managing risk. However, if I were to identify the soundbite that draws it all together, I believe it is the project professional’s ability to adapt and to make collaboration happen.

Success in any complex context is rarely the result of a lone pursuit. It is enabled by drawing together different and unique perspectives and enabling collaboration, conversations and creativity.

That is at the core of our practice and why I am confident that, with the right support, project professionals are well placed to navigate the challenges successfully. Indeed, our skills are more relevant than ever and they are the skills that society, business and the economy need to recover, change and flourish.

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Starting afresh and rediscovering innovation

Darren Dalcher Professor in strategic project management, Lancaster University Management School; and director, National Centre for Project Management

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ver the past 12 months and more, our world has changed dramatically as a result of the pandemic, forcing a recalibration of norms and behaviours. Yet the need to respond urgently and engage with rescue and recovery activities means there has been very little time to think about the changing nature of projects. As humanity seeks to establish a new normal, it becomes important to reflect on what we have learned during this turbulent period.

The responses of different countries across the globe have reshaped civilisation in unprecedented ways and may suggest new opportunities for societal engagement and the delivery of meaningful change. What, then, are the lessons for project management?

We have witnessed the results of exercising disaster management and rapid recovery projects on a global scale, often with spectacular results. At the start of 2020, it would have been unthinkable that most schools would be

The radical shifts that normally define transformation appear to have been mastered by society

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closed, billions would be out of work, individuals would be confined to their homes, all children would be home educated, food and toilet paper would disappear from shelves, landlords would not collect rent, banks would suspend mortgage payments, public gatherings would be banned, governments would put together the largest economic stimulus packages seen in a generation in order to maintain national economies, and the homeless would be housed in hotels. Yet it is increasingly clear that crises can rapidly reshape society, the economy and life as we know it.

Many of the urgent projects we have seen around us were borne out of crisis. A crisis is a wake-up call. Crisis situations are extreme because they threaten our very survival, creating an overwhelming urgency to resolve them. The pandemic has shaken many of the foundations and deeply held conventions underpinning society, the economy and government. The unique power of a crisis is in making the familiar shatter almost instantaneously.

The impact of a crisis can be likened to a rogue wave striking a ship in deep seas – sudden, spontaneous and significant. The response to the crisis necessitates a near continuous stream of urgent and unexpected miniprojects characterised by immediate decisions, plans that must be created and enacted in a matter of hours (or minutes), an immediate reversal of our conservative aversion to risk-taking, and the abolition of an excessive reliance on speculative business cases.

Hard-won insights The results have been nothing less than spectacular. In our haste to respond, we uncovered new abilities to work together, embrace new technologies, collaborate and achieve the impossible.

The radical shifts that normally define transformation appear to have been mastered by society: hospitals built in 10 days, new vaccines in circulation within a matter of weeks, education systems moving online and significant changes to all forms of human interaction, communication and collaboration.

Indeed, rather than finding new leaders

for times of crisis, we instead discovered a new society ready to band together.

Management guru Peter Drucker observed that: “The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence, it is to act with yesterday’s logic.” Perhaps our greatest challenge beyond the pandemic will be to retain our rediscovered sense of innovation beyond the immediate scope of the crisis and to embrace the new spirit of inclusivity, cooperation and creativity.

To prepare for the challenges of a more turbulent and volatile tomorrow, we therefore need to harvest hard-won insights from our experiences.

The six Ps The experience of working in more demanding contexts will require new positioning, including increased attention to the following aspects: 1 PURPOSE Increased primacy of meaning, needs, purpose and value creation.

2 PEOPLE Greater orientation on self, employees, customers, community and society.

3 PLACE Proliferation of remote, flexible and home-working modes away from the office.

4 PLATFORM Adoption of online platforms to compete with face-to-face communication.

5 PRAGMATISM Experimentation, testing and adaptation will remain essential to flourishing in a fast-changing world.

6 PROFESSIONALISM Reflection-in-practice and the ability to cope with and make sense of turbulent, volatile, novel and ambiguous conditions.

Underpinning it all is our willingness to continue to initiate, invent and innovate as project management rediscovers its way and its place in supporting, enhancing and sustaining society through meaningful change.

O This article draws on content from Darren’s forthcoming book, The Future of Project Management, to be published

by Routledge. He is also co-editor of the 7th edition of the APM Body of Knowledge.

Q&A > FROM THE FRONTLINE

Nick Elliott Former director general, UK Vaccine Taskforce

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What role will programme management play in rebuilding the country?

It has a huge role. We’re going to need to invest in our economic recovery, and that investment must be managed in an effective way to make sure we get the benefits from it. This means that programme and project managers are going to be at the heart of our economic recovery, and not just from COVID-19. We are moving into a new phase where our climate targets are going to be hugely important, as well as the levelling-up agenda of government.

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What has been the biggest lesson of the pandemic?

Expect the unexpected. If we’re going to have contingency plans, then they need to be real. We had a pandemic contingency plan for the UK, but actually it wasn’t a real plan, and when it was tested, it didn’t actually hold up. If we are going to plan, then let’s plan properly.

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What are the most important skills that project professionals need?

Being inquisitive – look for different ways of solving things and make sure you always seek information and use it to make decisions. Also maintain perspective. One thing that the last year has done for an awful lot of people is give them perspective of what’s really important to them and what’s not. And you’ve got to maintain your sense of humour otherwise we’ll all go mad!

Read Nick’s account of leading the Vaccine Taskforce on page 38

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Business as usual is not an option for a sustainable future Steve Crosskey and Besnike Jaka

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Project manager, Norwich Research Park Biorepository

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What projects are you currently working on?

I am currently drafting a sustainable business plan. I also provide project management for Norfolk’s COVID-19 genome sequencing team as part of COG-UK and provide logistical support to international partners.

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What innovations are you embracing in your projects?

We brought the Biorepository team to work with COG-UK’s genome sequencing team – originally to provide sample storage, but this soon morphed into providing anonymised metadata management, feeding into weekly SAGE reports and ultimately informing pandemic management on a regional and national level.

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What role will project management play in societal recovery?

It provides a consistent approach through structure and frameworks, including a rigorous approach to understanding and responding to risk.

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What are the biggest lessons of the pandemic?

Be vigilant, be rigorous in risk and contingency planning and be flexible.

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United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS)

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he world is changing rapidly, and there is a clear recognition that leaders must reshape project management and identify sustainable solutions.

Achieving sustainable outcomes and progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement requires a reassessment of the traditional project success criteria. Of course, a great deal is out of the hands of project managers and requires a national, global, ‘portfolio level’ strategic approach, but project managers need to be a part of the conversation – understanding the goals, ensuring projects are aligned and including activities that can enhance the required outcomes. Business as usual is not an option, and how we link project implementation activities and outputs to long-term outcomes and impact will be crucial.

Links between outputs and SDGs On average, UNOPS implements around 1,000 projects each year across more than 80 countries, with most of these being in low-income or fragile, conflictaffected states, which can ill afford to waste limited financial resources. Our expertise in infrastructure, procurement and project management for sustainable development, and in developing and implementing projects worldwide, has driven UNOPS to look closely at how we plan and implement our projects on behalf of our partners.

An area of focus in UNOPS over the past few years has been to look at how we can better support governments to build capacity, tools and processes to provide the evidence to align national planning to long-term development

goals, and thus to ensure projects are both aligned to these goals and also better able, where required, to demonstrate this. Such demonstration is through an evidenced-based approach to attract financing, which is increasingly setting stringent sustainability and resilience requirements.

One example of our work to date in this area is our research and support to governments through our partnership with the Oxford University Infrastructure Transitions Research Consortium. Together, we have sought to understand the links between project outputs and the SDG targets for infrastructure. By understanding these links during project planning, and also by ensuring activities that strengthen these links are included in our projects, we can ensure we can support our partners in turning outputs to outcomes and impact.

It is this up-front support, and using the common framework of the SDGs as a reference, that is allowing UNOPS

Projects must have a clear link to the wider, long-term outcomes and impacts to better support governments across the world. But, at heart, we remain an implementing agency of the UN, and how we implement our projects has to be more mindful of social and environmental aspects, broadening our view of ‘scope’ in the ‘iron triangle’ and not just focusing on cost and time, however important these are.

UNOPS has recently introduced an updated project management methodology and accompanying tool to improve the way we integrate key

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aspects during the UNOPS project lifespan. Improved project success criteria (with a particular focus on the project planning stage, including being clear about the project’s links to the SDGs), and dedicating attention to the environmental, social and economic aspects of sustainability in the early stages of project development, allow us to better direct and manage activities to enhance sustainability in our projects – and ensure long-term outcomes and impacts.

Case study: Mexico One significant example is UNOPS’ support to the government of Mexico.

To help maximise the efficiency, transparency and effectiveness of the procurement of medicines in Mexico, UNOPS partnered with the government in a landmark $6bn agreement to purchase medicines and medical supplies starting in 2020. Drawing on our expertise in public procurement and a successful track record in the region, UNOPS support will also help to promote transparency and efficient spending in Mexico’s public health sector. A sustainable procurement model is being developed that will increase the resilience of supply chains on behalf of the Institute of Health for Wellbeing, which is responsible for providing health coverage for around 65 million vulnerable people without social security.

We must be prepared, and collectively address, many of the challenges ahead. Projects must have a clear link to the wider, long-term outcomes and impacts intended through a more strategic portfolio management perspective. Through the business case, or project success criteria, activities and outputs generated through projects must be contributing to the intended outcomes and impacts. The SDG framework, in particular, is a way to bring together practitioners to help achieve this through a consistent approach and language, and a broader lens through which to view why and how we implement our projects.

Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez Co-founder, Strategy Implementation Institute; and former chair, PMI

Project-based ecosystems

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n January 2020, the co-founders of BioNTech were discussing over breakfast a paper about the SARS-CoV-2 virus circulating in Hubei Province. They understood that the situation could potentially become a global pandemic, so they launched a project to develop a vaccine.

The project took the form of an ecosystem, benefiting from unprecedented support from governments and regulatory agencies.

Their ecosystem project included competitors like Pfizer, which brought additional funding, but also expertise in late-stage clinical development, medical affairs and regulatory aspects.

Traditional views on ecosystems refer to established and permanent bonds between companies and industries. In most instances, this model is only accessible to large corporations, which decide to establish an ecosystem that they own most of and choose the partners they want to incorporate. But post-pandemic, more organisations of all sizes will look at temporary ecosystems as a way to expand their reach, developing new experiences for their customers while keeping costs low.

For example, creating the new mobility industry will involve automotive companies, infrastructure providers, designers, manufacturers, software and artificial intelligence companies, regulators and municipal governments, to name a few. Hence, a new project-based ecosystem that promotes experimentation and learning It’s easier to build trust in between partners, and helps to project-based ecosystems coordinate their investments, when the purpose is clear is essential to unlocking the and shared, and the benefits enormous potential. and contribution of each Projects can be viewed party have been defined as temporary ecosystems.

Besides the three main benefits of ecosystems – access to a broad range of capabilities, the ability to scale quickly, and flexibility and resilience – they bring additional ones. They have a common purpose and a clear deadline that increases focus and pressure; they are cheaper to access because they don’t require a huge investment of capital or resources; and they are more equal, as they don’t need to have a big corporation behind them. A project can be led by a small entity or a joint consortium of small or medium-sized companies.

What’s more, it’s easier to build trust in project-based ecosystems when the purpose is clear and shared, and the benefits and contribution of each party have been defined. Finally, organisational learning is essential. One of the success factors of projects is learning and competency building. The establishment of an efficient learning ecosystem is essential for success.

If we look at projects and megaprojects as agile ecosystems, we will understand that there is a new way of improving their efficiency and impact on the global economy and society at large.

O Antonio’s book The Harvard Business Review Project Management Handbook will be published in September 2021

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Peter Mumford Executive director, Highways England

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here are some key themes that will be important for major projects in the coming years. Investment in infrastructure will be a key component of the post-COVID economic recovery effort and our national ability to deliver will be more important than ever. Yet there remains a skills shortage across our sector and as a whole industry, across both the public and private sector, and we will need to redouble our efforts to attract and retain talented people from a diverse range of backgrounds and with a diverse range of skill sets.

The external landscape within which projects are initiated and delivered is changing at pace and we need to adapt quickly. Our focus should be on how investment in infrastructure projects can impact positively on the environment. Projects can enhance biodiversity while also minimising carbon impact both in delivery and across the Technology whole asset life. Project teams need opportunity is greater early understanding of these issues than it has ever and will need to develop project been, and the time plans that really engage with the has now come to opportunities to deliver positive genuinely capitalise environmental outcomes. on this opportunity Infrastructure projects present and to deliver the an opportunity to deliver important safety, efficiency and social value both locally and environmental benefits nationally. This can take the form available to us of job creation, improving local amenities, improving access to better transport and stimulating economic growth and opportunities for communities impacted by the work we do.

We must make sure our project leaders understand the importance of creating and delivering social value across the whole country and locally where we deliver projects. Making the connection between good economic infrastructure and the benefits to people and communities impacted by projects will be vital if we are to maintain support for large-scale investment in infrastructure.

Technology opportunity is greater than it has ever been, and the time has now come to genuinely capitalise on this opportunity and to deliver the safety, efficiency and environmental benefits available to us. We need to harness the power of data and more rapidly move towards off-site and modular forms of construction. This is fundamentally necessary in order to reduce the potential for harm to construction workers while also providing the real-world opportunity to radically increase productivity throughout delivery in a way that is essential if we are to deliver on the national demand for new infrastructure projects.

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Delivering cities of the future

Professor Bent Flyvbjerg and Dr Alexander Budzier University of Oxford

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OVID-19 and the 2050 net-zero climate targets force us to rethink how we procure, provide and use urban infrastructure. Cities like London need to find new uses for vacated retail and office spaces. Others aim to shift from car transport to increased cycling and walking. Copenhagen and Eindhoven were pioneers. Manchester, LA and New York are planning new urban green spaces. Venice, Hong Kong and Miami are protecting themselves against flooding. Green electrification is a main trend in mitigating the climate crisis, from cars to homes to industry.

Digitisation is everywhere.

Cities of the future have been imagined, from Le Corbusier’s 1925 Plan Voisin for Paris to Bjarke Ingels’s 2020 Masterplanet project. History has not been kind to such attempts, whether for new cities, like the Ordos ghost town in China, or the moving of capitals, eg Rio de Janeiro to Brasilia, or recent attempts at creating smart cities, like Google’s Sidewalk Toronto. Cities don’t scale well when the scaling is done top-down and in terms of big, bespoke projects, which tend to be slow, bureaucratic and ill adapted to user needs. For city development to work, it must be small-scale, agile and rapidly replicable.

Think Copenhagen’s Street Lab and Amsterdam’s Smart City Hub. Today, we see a deep contradiction between, on the one hand, slow top-

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Fast

Modular replicability Replicability is core to the idea of modularity. Research shows replicability is crucial to effective learning. It creates a feedback loop where you can use the experience from delivering one module to improve the next, ensuring that the quality of delivery improves constantly. The approach was recently used successfully for Hong Kong’s new Infection Control Center.

Replicability is also conducive to experimentation. Instead of going full scale immediately, you experiment with a few modules and use the experience to

Replicability creates a feedback loop where you can use the experience from delivering one module to improve the next

Forced scale-up Bespoke + fast = low quality

Smart scale-up Modular + fast = success

Dumb scale-up Bespoke + slow = boondoggle

Fumbled scale-up Modular + slow = missed opportunity

Speed

down developments that end up unfit for purpose and, on the other, innovations that work and are applauded by users, but that struggle to scale. We find this pattern not just for cities, but for major projects in general. Therefore, to succeed in building Cities of the Future, we need projects that scale from the bottom up.

We need smart scale-up. The key to smart scale-up is projects that are designed and delivered (see figure): 1. In a modular, replicable fashion.

2. At speed.

First, regarding modularity, successful approaches are frugal and work with just a few high-quality standard designs that can be quickly built and replicated over and over, like LEGOs, at any scale, from the smallest to the largest. Wind turbines and solar cells – that scale from cell to panel to row to field to farm to farms of farms – are exemplary, which explains their success in driving down electricity prices and CO2 emissions. We need to learn from this in building other kinds of infrastructure and in constructing homes, schools, hospitals, offices, hotels, etc. The good news is that it is already happening. The bad news is that it’s happening too slowly, especially when judged against urgent climate targets and the targets for building back after the pandemic.

Slow Modular (replicable)

Bespoke (one-off) Modularity

improve later modules. You repeat this until you master delivery, which is when you go full scale. Labs are the current frontrunner for experiments, like the EU-funded mobility labs in Stockholm, Turku, Madrid, Munich and Ruse. The ability to experiment and learn is the most basic explanation of why a venture that is based on modular replicability is more likely to succeed than a venture that depends on a one-off, bespoke construct that can only be delivered in one go.

Think nuclear power and big dams versus wind and solar, and you get the picture.

Second, speed is of the essence.

Neither design, negotiations, decisionmaking nor delivery can be allowed to drag on for years, as is typical for large programmes. Sidewalk Toronto failed because concerns over data privacy and governance went unresolved. The UK smart-meter roll-out programme suffered from slow development of the needed infrastructure and interoperable meters. It should be emphasised that, despite the need for speed, projects should not be fast-tracked. With fasttracking, delivery starts before designs and plans are completed. However, fast-tracking is a notoriously high-risk strategy, because the chances of making wrong decisions multiply without a firm design. The motto here is: ‘Think slow, act fast.’ If you skimp on thinking, it will slow you down later and nothing is

It should be emphasised that, despite the need for speed, projects should not be fast-tracked saved. With replicable modules, once you have thought through the first few, and learned from experimentation and first delivery, there will be less thinking necessary for each additional module, with replicability enabling speed and economy.

A matter of degree You can make yourself and your organisation hugely more valuable if you first become clear about your current position. Are you delivering a bespoke, one-off solution or a replicable, modular one? Are you delivering slowly or at speed? Then, move your focus and your activities systematically and effectively towards smart scale-up, the upper-righthand quadrant in the figure.

Smart scale-up is not an either-or proposition, but a matter of degree.

Your organisation will have elements of each. Your task is to increasingly and tenaciously tip the balance towards smart by introducing smart-scaled ventures and characteristics of smart scale-up into existing ventures. This will be key to meeting climate targets, building back after COVID-19 and delivering the cities of the future.

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The future of projects Sue Kershaw APM president, and managing director of transport, Costain Group

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ollaboration is built into the DNA of successful programmes. We know that when people work together to realise a common goal, united by shared values and purpose, they can achieve great things. Working in a team that crosses organisational boundaries and provides the right cultural environment for success is a very special thing. By connecting with each other in this way, we can elevate the performance of each individual party so that together we are providing an exceptional quality of service that meets – and surpasses – client expectations.

Faced by the challenges of the pandemic, we have united behind an endeavour that is bigger than us. Our healthcare system, key workers and volunteers have achieved a huge feat, vaccinating the nation, educating our

children and making sure there is food on the shelves. And our engineers have kept the country’s arteries, its transport network, moving while also delivering road and rail investment programmes, which will play an important role in our economic recovery.

I am convinced that creating the right environment for teams – and teams of teams – to flourish is central to successfully powering the economic recovery. I also believe that the COVID-19 pandemic has shone a spotlight on the inequalities in our society and the way we measure success.

The business case for new infrastructure must now clearly demonstrate social and economic benefits: how will investment leave a positive legacy for communities?

Collaboration builds the trust that we need in order to do things

differently. The A14 is a great example of this: more than 14,000 people have worked together as one team over the past five years to transform 21 miles of strategic A-road network connecting the Midlands with ports in the East of England. Jim O’Sullivan, CEO of Highways England, was proud to declare that the A14 is the only £1bn+ project in Europe that has been delivered ahead of schedule (eight months) and on budget.

The first phase of the Cambridge to Huntingdon improvement scheme was completed a year ahead of schedule, and the second eight months early with £196m in efficiencies realised against the client target of £108m.

As part of the A14 Integrated Delivery Team, we wanted to set a new standard for major project delivery from the start by fostering a high-performing culture of collaboration, continuous improvement and innovation. We used data and digital tools to help us achieve this and we built trust – in the information and in each other – to

Q&A > FROM THE FRONTLINE for repetitive activities, and projects are investing time in developing such routines to pay back in the relatively short term.

Julie Wood Lead for major complex projects, Arup

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What innovations are you embracing in your projects?

I’m seeing more frequently that we are using information from data to enable decision-making. Tools such as Power BI are making it easier for me to get an overview, see trends and then get information to understand what needs to be done. Machine learning is becoming more frequently used, particularly

The role of the project manager can be as a catalyst

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online platforms, it has been possible to reach people who may have otherwise not attended engagement events.

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Q

Q

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What is the biggest challenge you face in your work?

Making the most of data and turning it into information so that it can be most effective. A good solution to this is having data analysts on the team and getting them working with project leaders and managers to make use of this information.

How has project management innovated since the pandemic?

We have maximised the use of flexible approaches to work. In many instances, activities that people thought could only be done face-to-face have developed to be successful remotely – for instance, stakeholder engagement. By using

What is the biggest lesson the pandemic has taught you?

Be grounded, be agile and be available to the team, client and collaborator. And, most of all, remain positive. As a major project leader, I am very comfortable working in the VUCA environment – communicating with and training the wider team on how to be successful in such an environment was a brilliant investment in time and energy.

What role will project management play in societal recovery?

As project managers, we are the client’s right-hand person and provide the filter and funnel to the design and construction team. We are in a pivotal position. Being knowledgeable about

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Q&A > FROM THE FRONTLINE

Integrated transport reimagines the relationship between local communities and infrastructure deliver on budget, ahead of time and with a strong safety record.

A holistic approach to complex infrastructure programmes will allow us to maximise the potential of investment for everyone. By definition, integrated transport is a collaborative endeavour. It relies on local and devolved authorities, infrastructure owners and operators, and the private sector working together.

Facilitating last-mile journeys will transform the journey experience for customers. In doing so, integrated transport has the potential to catalyse modal shift, luring customers out of their cars and onto public transport – helping to meet our ambitious decarbonisation goals.

Integrated transport also reimagines the relationship between local communities and infrastructure, enabling healthy, active and zerocarbon lifestyles and facilitating inclusive economic growth across the UK. Collaboration will be the key to unlocking this potential.

the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and seeking ways to bring these goals into the project environment, is an amazing opportunity and responsibility for all project managers. With respect to business recovery, we can be a catalyst to exploring different uses for existing facilities that may no longer be required in their current form as the mode of office working and commuting shifts.

We must learn from other industries – cross-pollination is essential. What can the energy industry learn from rail, aviation, commercial property and manufacturing, for instance? Too often, we see sector-specific approaches and project participants having siloed thinking. The role of the project manager can be as a catalyst to unlock and migrate ideas from other industries, giving them a new injection and perhaps solving some legacy thinking.

Richard McWilliams Director of sustainability business, Turner & Townsend

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What projects are you working on right now?

I’m project director for delivery of the Mayor of London’s Retrofit Accelerators. These are major public-sector programmes to support local authority and housing association homes and health and education estates in their transition to a low-carbon future. They achieve this by increasing the scale and pace of ‘retrofit’ projects available, making built assets more sustainable, saving carbon and reducing energy bills.

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What innovations are you embracing in your projects?

Our projects use energy performance contracting so that the business case outcomes of energy bill and carbon savings are directly contracted to the supplier, minimising investment risk for the client. We are also supporting supply chains and clients to drive cost We are channelling and performance improvements for government stimulus industrialised retrofits using off-site into a green recovery manufacturing solutions. We use an that is driving innovation partnership procurement economic activity model that contracts increasing scale and jobs for the supplier as they show increased performance/cost reductions. Partnership and collaboration are absolutely vital to deliver more impactful project outcomes.

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What is the biggest challenge you face in your work?

Senior stakeholder buy-in to a self-funding pathway to net zero. It seems like an obvious thing to support; however, there are many competing priorities, and even where organisations have net-zero targets, they may have challenges around internal resourcing to make the case – and also, sometimes, the risk appetite to take on ambitious programmes.

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What role will project management play in societal recovery?

Through our ‘make it happen’ work on the accelerators, we are channelling government stimulus into a green recovery that is driving economic activity and jobs. As well as helping reduce the risk of climate change for future generations, we are also helping to alleviate fuel poverty by upgrading poor-quality housing through energy retrofits.

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What is the biggest lesson the pandemic has taught you?

We really are in a knowledge economy that relies on know-how and communication that can be shared remotely. This applies to construction professional services just as much as it does outside the built environment.

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What is one innovation project professionals need to make happen?

Adapt to contracting for outcomes that drive significant wider societal benefits. A deliverable is not the end of the story!

Q

How rewarding do you find your work?

Helping clients address major challenges in a way that delivers economic and social benefits – while saving the planet – is hugely rewarding. And every time I think of my three young children, it reminds me why that’s important.

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Dave Waller meets several project

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professionals who leapt from one sector to another. Their experience was a rewarding epiphany and a valuable lesson in self-confidence

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fter seven years in the Royal Navy, working his way up to a project management role in its helicopter fleet, Jacob Cooper needed a change. He wanted to work on large-scale infrastructure projects that would directly benefit people in their day-to-day. So he moved to Network Rail, becoming a scheme project manager on major rail electrification projects.

That’s when the doubts struck. In moments that will surely feel familiar to any project managers who have found themselves switching sectors, voluntarily or otherwise, Cooper feared he didn’t understand the details of this new role.

This made him nervous, and it didn’t take long for him to feel worse.

“In my first week, I was sat in a project workshop, and they were talking about being unable to install the catenary wire,” says Cooper. “They had to replan it, and the project was slipping. I interrupted: ‘Sorry, can you just run me through what the catenary wire is?’ They all just looked at me. It’s the wire that holds the electric wire. I didn’t even know the basics of that. I just thought: ‘What have I got myself into here?’”

Claire Wood

An epiphany of sorts This may strike a chord with readers right now. With the pandemic making organisations rethink their operating

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models, the possibility of change looms larger than ever, and it’s understandable that the prospect of shifting sectors should feel daunting. But according to Cooper, and others who’ve jumped aboard the sector-shifting train, the journey is always well worth it.

Indeed, it didn’t take long for Cooper to realise that his lack of sector-specific knowledge wouldn’t affect his ability to project manage: to develop and interrogate a schedule, to manage project resources or to liaise with stakeholders.

“I soon realised I didn’t need to understand every aspect of how something was constructed,” he says.

“I was able to use all the experienced people in the organisation to support me on the elements I didn’t understand.

And my project skills meant I could ensure it was delivered within budget and to the correct time and quality. That was a really big learning for me.”

He’s certainly not the only one to have had that epiphany. After seven years in the water industry, Kitty Ho was conscious she’d only ever worked in the public sector and was keen to gain experience in the faster pace of the private. She landed a programme management consultancy role in the property sector, through Faithful + Gould – despite feeling she didn’t tick all the boxes defined in the job ad.

LIAM JACKSON, ØRSTED “With the impact of COVID-19, the oil and gas company I worked for was looking to make redundancies.

I was about to become a father, and I wanted to take the rest of the year off, so I offered to take mine.

Then this job came up at Ørsted, the renewables company, based only six miles from my house. Renewables is a sector with a big future, and I want to do my part in reaching net-zero carbon by 2050. I took the weekend off, and started there on the Monday.

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“I soon realised I didn’t need to understand every aspect of how something was constructed... I was able to use all the experienced people in the organisation to support me on the elements I didn’t understand” JACOB COOPER

“Coming from oil and gas, I expected the offshore wind industry to be really advanced. You see these new turbines and fancy boats with all the technology. But when you see it from the inside, many of the processes are only halfway there. When you’re scheduling work in oil and gas, for example, you have a five-year look ahead for projects. Here we’re lucky to get six months. At the start of the year, we had 38 projects. In just three months, we had another 50 come in that no one knew about.

“The first few times you face these challenges, you end up swearing to yourself. Every year we send teams out to inspect our North Sea turbines. We have well over 300, across six sites. I asked the guys how much these inspections cost. They didn’t know – they just placed an open purchase order and the contractors got on with it.

“So I’ve since written a couple of project-tracking procedures to cover the scheduling, and I started monitoring the cost of these inspections. I worked out that,

because they were doing them in winter, some of the sites were only 35 per cent productive. On one, we were paying £5,000 a day for the inspection team. If bad weather stopped them going offshore, they got sent home on pay. Now we’re looking at moving the work to a better season, and using our internal staff instead of contractors.

“As a project manager, you can bring new ideas to a sector that help save money or increase productivity or safety. There’s a lot of satisfaction in that.”

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“I felt imposter syndrome for the first time in my career, and that only deepened as I watched everyone in their element, while I was trying to get to grips with this new environment”

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KITTY HO

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“I felt imposter syndrome for the first time in my career,” she says of the shift. “And that only deepened as I watched everyone in their element, while I was trying to get to grips with this new environment. The stages of a property project were different from what I was used to. I was used to being the one who knew everything. Plus I’m a bit of a perfectionist. Here I was always wondering if I’d done a good enough job.”

Tracking down chances to learn Ho tackled the problem by being proactive in seeking opportunities to learn – by asking to sit in on meetings and conversations that would help plug the gaps in her knowledge. Plus she’d stayed in touch with former colleagues she could confide in; people who knew the way she worked, and who could give her invaluable encouragement on her new challenge.

One area in which Ho found herself working was the exciting field of electric vehicle charging. These projects were challenging because they weren’t new just to her: the subject-matter expert was new to the client; and the contractors hadn’t necessarily delivered electric vehicle chargers before either.

Stakeholder management was tough too: gauging personalities and how best to work with them to ensure the project was progressing.

Like Cooper over at Network Rail, Ho turned to skills she’d brought with her from her previous sector. “I really drew back on my previous experience of working with other people, applying trial and error, trying to find which framework worked best for them.

While the processes were different, my project management knowledge was transferable. And stepping outside my comfort zone really challenged me to see what I’m capable of.”

Cooper found plenty of other competencies applied in his shift too: leadership, the ability to understand and plan resources against a schedule, and conflict management. Then there was risk and issue management. He reports that, while some risks were too technical for him to spot, he was spotting others ahead of everyone else.

The advantages of an outsider “I found myself identifying risks that were blatant to me, but which nobody else saw because they’d all been tunnelvisioned into a certain way of working,” he says. “I was coming at it from a

FACING A LEAP INTO A NEW SECTOR? HERE ARE SIX TOP TIPS

1

Get a mentor. Talk to someone who can encourage you and walk you through the process. Having someone to bounce off will alleviate those “I can’t do this” thoughts.

2 Mike Wilkinson

Trust your toolkit. From communications skills to conflict management, project managers have a huge range of valuable skills.

Shifting sectors is just about picking the right ones at the right times.

3

Do your research. Look up the organisation and sector news online. This will give you a gauge

of how you can apply your toolkit before you even start.

4

Get stuck in. Don’t wait for your manager to introduce you to people. Embrace being the newbie by immersing yourself in conversations, and asking questions, from day one.

5

Go easy on yourself. It’s okay to make mistakes, as long as you learn the lessons and move on. So exercise compassion; enjoy stepping outside your comfort zone; and don’t let fear stop you from being yourself.

NIRU THIYAGAN, DIGITAL FINEPRINT “A few years ago, I was coming to the end of a two-year contract at Public Health England, when a maternity cover role came up at Octopus Investments, a fintech start-up. I’m young and I like being able to effect change quickly, so I wanted to try the private sector.

“They didn’t have much project governance. I decided I wouldn’t make it hefty, but I did enough to safeguard management expectations. It was so much faster to get sign-off. Within nine months, I’d done four or five software delivery projects that would have normally taken a lot longer. They were able to see how things improved, and I got a really positive response.

“After another year back at the NHS, I moved into insurtech at a company of fewer than 20 people.

I spent the first six months working on a waterfall-agile hybrid model, and from January began moving the team to completely agile.

“Again, I was new to the sector, so when I began implementing the project management office, I had regular open conversations with them, asking if it was working. I got a lot of really good feedback.

“As a project manager, you build a toolkit and you take it along with you. Switching sectors is just about what you take out of the toolkit and how you tailor it. So even though the pace was faster, I was able to use the strong project communication skills I’d picked up at the NHS. I also found myself using the same delivery skills and Gantt charts.

“I’ve seen people who worked in the public sector for years and they become too scared to switch.

But as long as you can manage stakeholders and change, it’s really a no-brainer. Whatever sector you put me in now, I’m able to transfer my skills. And if I need to learn about an industry, I can. That fear is gone, and that’s so important.”

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new point of view. So if you change sectors, it can be very beneficial to the organisation you’re joining. That was a huge learning for me. I was thrown into a very challenging and complex project, and I proved that it is absolutely possible to change.”

Others have taken a bumpier route to that same realisation. In 2017, Lexie Smith was made redundant from a project management role at an insurance firm – a “pivotal” moment in her career. “I didn’t want to feel like that again,” she says, “so I decided I’d move around on my own terms from then on.”

A month later she was accepting a project management role in facilities, running a full office strip-down and refit. She was still in her early 20s, so wanted the budget responsibility on her CV. What she got was an eye-opening experience – moving into facilities as a young female was tough.

“I endured something of a challenge,” she says, “working with tradesmen who weren’t too friendly taking instructions from a young female with a lack of experience in that sector – as well as navigating through the usual politics. I was signing off contractors’ risk and method statements for using tools and equipment I didn’t know. And all the paperwork competed with what I wanted to do as a project manager – to deliver on time or sooner.”

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“I can go into any organisation and know within days whether there will be any conflict. That’s another really good skill to have, as you can then work around it or build up your resilience to deal with those situations” LEXIE SMITH

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The good, the bad and the ugly

Smith pushed herself to continue, to secure the experience for her CV, and left after nine months. Yet the lesson she drew isn’t to avoid trying new things. It’s that there’s plenty to be gained by leaping into a new sector – even if you do have a bad experience.

She talks about how she got to see “the good, the bad and the ugly”, and was taught to fail fast and learn quickly. And she can now take her new understanding with her through the rest of her career.

“Now I can quickly establish the types of projects I’ll enjoy and the people I’ll like working with,” she says. “That’s key for me now. And I can go into any organisation and know

within days whether there will be any conflict. That’s another really good skill to have, as you can then work around it or build up your resilience to deal with those situations. So I’m not just telecoms or HR. I’m a project manager who can do whatever you need me to.”

When asked about the benefits of switching sectors, Cooper goes even further. He says if it wasn’t for switching sectors, he’d never have achieved his chartership. He simply wouldn’t have the breadth of knowledge, or the exposure to the whole project life cycle. Shifting sectors has shown him new ways of working, given him new structures to learn from

and handed him an expanded network.

But there are more psychological benefits too.

“Until you’ve moved sector once and proved to yourself you can do it, you’ll always have that doubt,” he says.

“If, for whatever reason, I needed to move sector now, I’d have absolutely no hesitation doing so – as long as it was a good project that provided the right opportunities for me to develop.

“I’ve never looked back. I’ve shown myself not only that I can transition, but also that I can excel in a new sector.

That alone is reason enough to move: to prove to yourself that sector is no boundary in project management.”

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and Projects Authority, who’s clear that the difference between success and failure for a project comes down to getting the basics right. What can be so difficult about that?

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t’s hard for anyone, whatever their political stripe, to accuse the current government of lacking ambition when it comes to major projects. Levelling up, ‘build back better’, net zero – the key planks of Prime Minister Johnson’s agenda for wholesale economic recovery, reform and sustainability are all dependent to a great extent on rolling out a new generation of big-ticket infrastructure projects fit for the 21st century and beyond.

But, as every good project manager knows only too well, bold promises are one thing, making them happen quite another. And the man tasked with making sure that the UK has the project capability required to match the scale of its national vision is Nick Smallwood, CEO of the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA).

It’s probably the most influential job in UK infrastructure, and one of the toughest. It’s no secret, after all, that the vast majority of major projects across the world bust schedules and budgets almost as a matter of course. Some

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never get finished at all. “Globally, the benchmarks will tell you that around 75 per cent of projects over £2bn or so are typically over on cost and schedule, and typically by a large amount. I would call those train wrecks,” Smallwood cheerfully admits.

But, characteristically undaunted by the scale and complexity of the 130odd multibillion-pound projects in the Government Major Projects Portfolio (GMPP), which he oversees – including controversial headliners HS2 and Crossrail – Smallwood is adamant that the picture of overruns painted by those global figures is very far from inevitable.

“The counter is also true – that 25 per cent are successful.”

The difference between success and failure is plain, he adds, and while major projects remain inherently challenging to deliver, the needle can be moved in the other direction. “When you look at the 25 per cent that do deliver on their outcomes, you will see some very clear and obvious information.

Successful projects really get the basics

“I had the very strong view that we needed to step up the performance of the Government Major Projects Portfolio, focusing more on benefits and delivering better outcomes”

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right. They have competent people – strong programme and project delivery managers. They are very clear on the outcomes they are trying to achieve, and they are ruthless in their pursuit of those objectives – they are not swayed from their path by late changes, ‘good ideas’ or stakeholder changes of mind. They really stay the journey.” t’s an observation borne out by Smallwood’s 37-year career delivering complex projects for Shell (culminating in the role of VP project engineering – de facto global head of the project discipline), the world’s fourth largest oil major, and one that he immediately brought to bear at the IPA when he joined as CEO in August 2019. “I had the very strong view that we needed to step up the performance of the GMPP, focusing more on benefits and delivering better outcomes than we had before.

If you have the right capability and the right capacity, you can do more.”

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people have the skills they need to do the job, hence the recent launch of a major new skills initiative, the Government Projects Academy (GPA).

Building on the existing success of the Major Projects Leadership Academy in developing world-class project leadership, the GPA aims to bring the same rigour to bear throughout the mass of the government’s 14,000 project professionals, spread across multiple departments and functions.

“The MPLA’s project leadership programme is second to none, but it’s only a very small percentage of

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project professionals who get to that level.

“The academy is a huge step forward. We can finally focus attention on four levels of project professionalism, from the foundation level, where we need to ground people’s understanding of the profession, through to practitioners, senior practitioners and ultimately masters,” he says. He believes that the qualifications and assessments provided through the GPA will bring a new level of quality and consistency to government project teams, helping to address the criticism that, while some departments clearly represent pockets of excellence, there is too much variation in project performance across government as a whole. his is something the past year has thrown into sharp relief, with highs like the vaccination roll-out and furlough schemes on the one hand, and lows like Test and Trace on the other.

“The projects that have been successful have been those that have leveraged professional project skills, and expertise from the private sector, and brought resource and capacity to bear in a very short time.” Following these good

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examples, the GPA will also make use of established private sector expertise.

“We’ve been very clear about what already exists in the marketplace. At senior practitioner level, for example, we have said that we want chartered status or equivalent, so we’re looking to APM as the chartered body in the UK.” ltimately, Smallwood believes it will boost the performance and credibility of the profession in government and ensure more successes, and fewer failures. “Being clear in what skills are needed at each of those four levels, and assessing and accrediting people in them, will help us to deploy the right people in the right places and give us a much more consistent lens on professional development.”

For Smallwood, consistency – like charity – begins at home. Hence the IPA Mandate, published in January, which formally lays out the IPA’s dual remit as both gatekeeper/adviser for major project decisions and promoter of best practice across the profession in Whitehall and beyond. The mandate was prompted, he says, by the discovery when he joined that, although there were letters from a couple of prime ministers and at least one chancellor, there was no single primary source for what the government wanted the IPA to do.

“I like clarity,” he says simply.

“I don’t think a good project or programme manager wants to be vague or leave optionality on what they are going to deliver. I felt it was very important to pull all those notes together so we could be clear about expectations – what governance and assurance the IPA can provide around major projects, but also the service, support and advice we can give.”

It draws on Smallwood’s cast-iron track record of managing multibillion-

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“We’re going to be able to work in ways that we never have before, but I’m not concerned that this will eliminate people’s jobs; I think it will free up capacity”

pound projects in the private sector, the fundamental principles of which are universal, he believes. “A road bridge in the public sector doesn’t look very different from one in the private sector. The only thing that changes is the stakeholder management and the politics around the position.” But he concedes that the cost/benefit analysis also tends to be more challenging.

“The public value framework brings a dimension of complexity that you don’t always have in the private sector. But it’s right to have those conversations about the benefits that you are bringing to society, because public sector projects are for the citizens of the UK.” True to form, the mandate is a model of clarity and sets out the role of the IPA in the GMPP in five key areas: it has the final decision on projects entering the GMPP, it tracks and monitors them, it will intervene early to ensure they are set up for success, it ensures they are deliverable and it is responsible for systemic improvements in project delivery across government. fter a year of managing most of the IPA’s 200 or so professionals remotely, you might expect that a practical project guy like Smallwood would have had enough of technology, but far from it. “I’ve worked more months remotely than I did face-to-face with my team. We’ve had to step up to deliver numerous pandemic-related projects as well as progressing with massive existing ones like HS2. I’ve been blown away by how quickly people have adapted. I’m hugely proud of them.”

And in terms of the profession, remote working is just the tip of a coming tech revolution, he believes.

“We are still doing some large projects in the same way we have for 40 years, but times change and we have to change with them. There are huge opportunities for robotics, AI and automated software that we really need to embrace in the public sector. We’re going to be able to work in ways that we never have before, but I’m not concerned that this will eliminate people’s jobs; I think it will

A

Big interview, 2

“There will be some really challenging choices to be made in terms of energy and how we wean ourselves off fossil fuels” free up capacity and help make us more productive.”

So, tech-related productivity improvements will have a role to play in tackling the IPA’s extensive to-do list, growing apace thanks to that aforementioned trio of levelling up, building back better and – perhaps the greatest challenge of all – the race to get to net zero by 2050. This has been given even greater urgency by the recent pledge to cut emissions by 78 per cent by 2035.

“The prime minister is right that infrastructure provides a fantastic opportunity to restart the economy, jobs and skills up and down the country. And building a low-carbon future will bring a whole raft of challenges, not only in terms of the type of projects we will be doing, but also in the ways that we do them,” says Smallwood. “There will be some really challenging choices to be made in terms of energy and how we wean ourselves off fossil fuels. We’re looking at four schemes across the UK right now that link carbon capture and storage with power generation, for example, and hydrogen production. These are things that will impact society and the way that we live and work every day.”

CV: Nick Smallwood 1981 Joins Shell as a mechanical engineer at the giant Stanlow refinery in Cheshire. Spends time in South Africa, Canada and the US managing – and turning around – a string of significant refinery and construction projects for the firm. Becomes an increasingly experienced and expert major projects director.

2012 Appointed vice president of project engineering at Shell, and head of project discipline, across the entire upstream and downstream businesses.

Develops the firm’s Global Project Academy skills programme.

2018 Retires from Shell, becoming an independent major projects consultant.

2019 Joins Infrastructure and Projects Authority as chief executive and head of the project delivery function for the UK government.

2021 Launches Government Project Academy skills initiative.

ut, ultimate test or not, it’s clear that he relishes the prospect of getting to grips with it and making sure that bold official commitments are backed by the world-class project skills that will be needed to deliver them.

“It’s a fantastic moment to be involved in projects in the UK. We’ve got a very ambitious government with a oncein-a-generation strategy. I can’t think of a better time to be helping deliver projects faster, smarter and greener.

Working with a team at the IPA who are so dedicated to making a difference is an opportunity I wouldn’t have missed.”

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Vaccines, 1

COVID-19

RUNNING THE UK’S VACCINE TASKFORCE Nick Elliott provides his account of leading the

government’s programme to urgently secure and deliver COVID-19 vaccines It was in March 2020 that the UK’s chief scientific advisor Sir Patrick Vallance decided to act on a thought that vaccines might provide the only way out of the coronavirus pandemic.

The focus of government at that time was on providing the correct PPE and getting Test and Trace sorted out. Sir Patrick thought we needed to start thinking about vaccines as the medium- to long-term solution, so he brought together a vaccine expert advisory panel of academics, clinical specialists and industry experts.

At the same time, the BioIndustry Association formed a manufacturing group in support of the advisory panel. This was an important moment, as Steve Bates, its CEO, assembled his members to conduct an audit of vaccine manufacturing capacity in the UK, which became the baseline manufacturing benchmark for the Vaccine Taskforce (VTF), enabling us to identify gaps, what capacity we needed to secure quickly and what we needed to invest in.

This was the genesis of what became the VTF. In April 2020, Kate Bingham, a member of that expert advisory panel, was asked by

the prime minister to become the chair of a nascent VTF. At the same time, I was asked to move from my role as deputy chief executive of Defence Equipment & Support in the Ministry of Defence to take on the role of director general (DG) of the VTF and senior responsible owner of the vaccine programme.

Three big, audacious goals The VTF had three goals. The first was to secure access to a promising COVID-19 vaccine or vaccines for the UK population as quickly as possible.

That was about selecting the right vaccines to pursue, making sure the manufacturing capability was in place to deliver them and doing the right commercial deals. Most importantly, it was doing all of that at a rapid pace – we knew we needed to do this as quickly as possible.

The second goal was to make provision for the international distribution of vaccines, as we recognised that getting a solution for the UK was only part of the plan. The third was a legacy goal to support UK industrial strategy by establishing a long-term vaccine strategy to prepare the UK for future pandemics,

especially in terms of manufacturing in the UK. One of the things we needed to do if we were going to be successful was to navigate government processes as quickly and efficiently as possible.

We needed to set up an organisation from scratch in an incredibly short period of time, and we needed to create an empowered team capable of delivering those challenging goals.

Making that happen was my key responsibility, and the only way to achieve it was to set out from the start a clear vision of what success looked like and to be absolutely focused on delivering that outcome.

Our goal to secure access to a promising vaccine as quickly as possible meant we had to get a team of genuine experts together. It wasn’t a traditional team; it was a ‘rainbow’ team of scientific and industry experts, civil servants, military planners and a few consultants, hosted by government. We brought in a whole host of different people over the next few months, building a team of around 200. We were based in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and we had to go through all of the government

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processes, procedures and approvals to get anything done.

Following process was important to ensure accountability of how we were spending taxpayers’ money. However, speed of action was mission critical, so we needed to navigate that process in a way that allowed us to operate at the pace we needed. We needed to focus on outcomes rather than procedure and to do this at speed. The answer was to design bespoke governance and to build trust and confidence with the key decision-makers across all of government, but especially in the Treasury, Cabinet Office and Number 10, and it was about making sure we had an absolutely robust and focused plan against which success could be measured.

Nick is now a director at Turner & Townsend

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We found lots of ways to be agile. For example, we had to get approval from four different departments to spend any money, even after we had our portfolio budget approved by the Treasury. We needed sign-off from business secretary Alok Sharma, health secretary Matt Hancock, Lord Theodore Agnew from the Cabinet Office and chief secretary to the Treasury Steve Barclay.

Normally, going through those four different departments and all their teams and briefers would take considerable time and effort, so we got them to agree to come together in a single ministerial panel: the four of them together with one set of papers – and we could call them together at 24 hours’ notice. They were fantastically flexible. That meant that – in one example – we closed a negotiation late at night on a Monday. We put it through BEIS’s internal approvals process by the Thursday, we called the panel together on the Friday evening and by Saturday we had signed the contract.

Four-and-a-half days from the completion of contract negotiation to signing is unheard of in government – that’s the sort of agility we were able to bring. Of course, the imperative of the COVID-19 crisis helped us to achieve this, but there is no reason why the principles can’t be adopted in more normal times. It means putting much

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The job of a leader is to make sure that every single person is able to operate at 100 per cent of their individual effectiveness greater value on time and speed of decision-making focused on outcomes rather than process.

Placing bets There were more than 200 potential COVID-19 vaccines undergoing some form of development, so how did we decide where to place our bets? It was hugely important that we undertook rigorous expert assessment, but equally important that we used the right selection criteria to pick our portfolio.

The criteria we used ensured that we had a selection of different vaccine types, from the traditional inactivated whole virus vaccines to the new and novel mRNA vaccines. But the most important criterion was time – was the vaccine already in the clinic, could it get to human trials quickly and could it be manufactured at pace to ensure it would be available if and when proved safe and effective and approved for use? Not only did we need to decide which vaccines to back, but also where to invest at risk on trials capacity and manufacture.

There was a worldwide shortage of

manufacturing capacity, so putting this into place for the UK without knowing at that stage exactly which vaccine it was going to be used for was another critical factor in ensuring ultimate success.

Once we had selected our portfolio, our negotiation team, led

by Maddy McTernan, a director in UK Government Investments, went to work. But this was not commodity procurement of drugs; we needed to build partnerships and alliances with the companies we wanted to work with and each one of those was very different. For example, the deal with Oxford University and AstraZeneca was for a vaccine that had been developed in the UK with government investment, and Oxford had then brought in AstraZeneca with government support. We put in place government-funded manufacturing capacity and agreed a not-for-profit/ not-for-loss deal which also promoted the international manufacture and distribution of that vaccine. This was a very different negotiation than for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which had been produced without any initial investment from the UK. Given the unique distribution challenges of the –70°C cold chain of this vaccine, the joint development of a supply and distribution solution between the

Vaccines, 2

COVID-19

Sir Patrick Vallance was quick to identify vaccines as the most likely route out of the pandemic

ORIGINAL STEERING GROUP OF THE VACCINE TASKFORCE

Kate Bingham chaired the VTF

UK and Pfizer became a key part of this deal. The collaborative and close partnership we built ensured that the UK got as much supply as possible, as early as possible.

Getty

Good leadership My key role as DG was to bring together and lead this unique team and to make sure that the different but complementary skills of those from the public and private sectors came together effectively, while keeping the focus on delivering the outcome. This was achieved through good old-fashioned leadership: setting the vision, building trust, empowering individuals, bringing people together to find solutions and believing in their ability to do so. It was hard work and took time and effort – there was no silver bullet.

Chair: Kate Bingham Deputy chair: Clive Dix Director general, BEIS: Nick Elliott Director, BEIS: Ruth Todd Director, BEIS: Tim Colley Director, BEIS: Dan Osgood Director, UK Government Investments: Madelaine McTernan National Institute for Health Research: Divya Chadha Manek Manufacturing advisor: Ian McCubbin CEO, BioIndustry Association: Steve Bates Clinical and public health adviser to the VTF: Professor Jonathan Van-Tam

In practical terms, it’s important to understand that as a leader you rarely actually deliver anything yourself. It is our people in our programme and project teams who do the work. It is the individual experts within our collective teams who actually know how to get things done in the most effective way.

What they need help with is clarity of vision and knowing what success looks like. They need some guidelines to work within and somewhere to go for help and support when required, but most of all they need to be trusted to get on and deliver.

The job of a leader is to make sure that every single person on the team is able to operate at 100 per cent of their individual effectiveness, and that you know what is needed to enable each individual to achieve that. Everybody is different, so everybody will need a different way to enable them to operate like that. It’s about understanding who your people are, what motivates them, what they find easy, what they find difficult, what personal and professional challenges they are coping with and how to overcome them. That all takes time, effort and engagement, which was challenging.

What was also challenging was that we had to do this in an environment where we were working remotely throughout. One of the big challenges

that we are all going to face as leaders post-COVID-19 is how we continue to maximise all the benefits of technology to facilitate remote working but still find a way to build meaningful personal relationships at the same time.

Ending on a high At the end of November 2020, the Pfizer-BioNTech Phase 3 trial results arrived. They proved the vaccine to be both safe and effective. It was an absolutely amazing moment. We’d never known until that point whether or not we would even have a vaccine, and to have the first one proven to be so successful was quite amazing.

By 2 December 2020, the UK had approved that vaccine – the first country in the world to do so – and by 8 December, just one week later, Margaret Keenan was the first person to receive it. Within a three-week period, we’d gone from trial results, through regulatory approval, to distribution and deployment. That was a fantastic time for all of us in the VTF, because we knew then that Sir Patrick had been right and vaccines were going to give us a way out of the pandemic.

Listen to Nick’s full account of running the Taskforce in APM’s ‘From the Frontline’ podcast series at apm.org.uk/resources/the-apm-podcast

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M R O F S N TRA W

hen Netflix announced the launch of its streaming service in January 2007, TV entered a new era. The way we watch TV programmes and movies has changed irreversibly, from linear – watching scheduled programming as it is broadcast – to a largely ondemand world, where it’s commonplace to devour an entire series in one go.

Intensified competition for eyeballs has created an imperative for broadcasters to re-engineer their viewing experience or fall by the wayside. But that’s only the most visible aspect of a digital transformation that the entire sector has been undergoing, as technology offers new ways to recast every aspect of production and distribution. And project management, once alien to the creative and sales-driven culture of the TV world, has played a key role in that metamorphosis. So what does digital transformation mean in practice?

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THE BBC

TRANSFORMING OPERATIONS Founded in 1922, the BBC has never stopped evolving. In the 21st century, the pace has quickened and it has taken rapid strides in introducing new digital services, while continuing to provide local, national and international TV and radio services. New director general Tim Davie has espoused a mission statement “to deliver for the whole of the UK and ensure every household gets value from the BBC”.

Rachel Baldwin is a programme manager overseeing multiple projects in the BBC’s design and engineering division. The new mission provides a clear focus for the transformation work taking place, she says. “We need to

know that we are serving all audiences in the UK, and so it’s important we have data to tell us that we are doing that. Last year was an amazing year; in the final week of 2020, the BBC reached 95 per cent of all adults in the UK.” There are also four specific priorities that transformation work has to deliver against: “We will renew our commitment to impartiality. We will focus on unique, high-impact content.

We will extract more from online. And we will build commercial income.”

Much of this work is invisible to the consumer audience. The specific area that Baldwin’s programme addresses is transforming workflows for journalists in the BBC’s news operations. “We’ve delivered a range of projects, providing new tools, systems and products, which help journalists to maximise value to audiences, which

Broadcast, 1 Alamy

V T G MIN is more specifically making it easier for them to work together to produce content for all platforms, be it radio, TV, online or social,” she explains. “The tools also make it easier for them to collaborate on stories, be that locally, nationally or globally. Also to re-version their digital content into over 40 languages very quickly.”

One project that proved invaluable during the pandemic is the implementation of a new cloud-based planning and deployment system for journalists called Wolftech, which is used to plan news stories, deploy crews to location and enable news teams to collaborate in real time on stories across the globe. It’s now used on most news stories globally. Before the pandemic Wolftech had already been introduced in the UK newsroom, and the fact that journalists could access the cloud-based system using laptops and mobiles made the

ITV

Lockdown smash hits: ITV’s White House Farm and (left) the BBC’s I May Destroy You

EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL REVOLUTION

transition to remote working much easier, says Baldwin.

But thousands of other journalists around the world had yet to be trained on the system, and the classroom teaching they would have received normally had to be replaced by new, rapidly developed online modules, which could be delivered remotely in small groups over Zoom . “We’ve now got all journalists globally on the system and the feedback for the remote training and implementation has been excellent.

So it’s a real story of success,” she adds.

Project and change management are well established at the BBC, says Baldwin. One approach that has worked well recently is the use of agile techniques to test new ways of working with pilot teams, then review and adjust, until new workflows are ready to roll out more widely. This test and learn approach builds people’s confidence in new ways of working, Baldwin finds.

ITV is the UK’s biggest commercial broadcaster and so is also vulnerable to the growth of subscription-based services. Its current digital transformation drive began when new CEO Carolyn McCall arrived in January 2018.

McCall revised the strategic vision to focus on bringing content to audiences “whenever, wherever and however they choose”.

June Stewart, head of project and resource management at the company (pictured), says the digital transformation effort has two strands. “How We Watch includes all the external-facing elements such as ITV Hub, Britbox and our new advanced advertising platform, Planet V. And How We Work is more about our internal ways of working,

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looking at our core processes,” she explains. “This year, there is also a specific focus on ITV Hub and the user experience. So now you’ll hear Carolyn talk a lot about how we make the Hub a destination instead of just a catch-up service.”

The How We Work side is about transforming core systems and digitising end-to-end processes, enhancing the user experience for colleagues, working efficiently, and the wider adoption of digital ways of working. This year, the focus has been on transformation of HR and finance. “It’s not just about the systems, it’s about how the way we work is supported by technology,” says Stewart.

Dominika Phillips-Blackburn, one of ITV’s agile delivery managers, says that in this sector, solutions can’t always be bought off the shelf, so ITV has become adept at developing its own. A key project she has managed is the development and implementation of FreeCon, a system which manages the contracting of all freelance staff by ITV. “We had a lot of processes, databases and information on our freelancer community that weren’t all in one place. And it was very different across different productions,” she explains.

The project started as a proof of concept; a third-party consultancy helped with development, and once the decision was taken to invest, the project was delivered using scrum methodology, says Phillips-Blackburn. “We have fully automated the sending of a contract to a freelancer and integrated Adobe Sign so that they can sign it all online. And then we are scheduling in the days that they’re going to be working for us, which is the basis for them getting paid.”

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This kind of system is completely invisible to the viewer, but of vital importance to ITV’s success in attracting and retaining talented staff, Stewart points out.

By working more efficiently, effort can be diverted into other areas of innovation. So this aspect of digital transformation is just as important as improving the user experience.

There are challenges, she says: ensuring each individual project delivers the expected value and prioritising work when demand exceeds capacity. But, above all, says Stewart, “This whole transformation is about mindset and culture. We want to change our ways of working, we want to be more efficient in the way we do things and we want to experiment with new ideas. It’s not just about replacing one system with another – it’s taking a fresh look at everything.”

“This transformation is about mindset and culture... we want to change our ways of working”

CHANNEL 4

DELIVERING A FUTURE-PROOF STRATEGY Last November, Channel 4 CEO Alex Mahon announced Future4, a strategy to put the company “on the path to a digital future”. The five-year plan has two key objectives: to double viewing figures on the streaming platform All 4; and to create new revenue streams, delivering 30 per cent of total revenues from digital advertising and 10 per cent from non-advertising.

Sonia Sharma, head of enterprise PMO and planning at Channel 4, says: “People may think that we are at the start of our digital transformation journey with the new strategy, but I believe we paved the way with some significant initiatives over the past couple of years. We have implemented several digital projects and programmes, particularly in the sales space, that have given us a head start.”

Significant projects already completed in the last couple of years include development of the subscription version of All 4; partnerships including development of Britbox with BBC and

A MOVIE CLASSIC BFI REMASTERING Approaching its 90th year, the BFI faces many of the same challenges as TV companies.

Since joining in 2013, Ed Humphrey, director of digital, has overseen the launch of BFI Player, extensive website redevelopment, a rapid expansion of distribution and creation of new revenue streams, alongside two major projects to digitise the BFI’s priceless archive of classic British film.

He says: “I think we’re well down the road to being a digital-first company, but with

some way to go. For me, digital transformation means a focus on the user, the audience, not on the technology, and what we’ve done with BFI Player and other projects is to put the user at the heart of what we’re trying to achieve.”

Delivering transformation is never easy, but “in an organisation with nearly 100 years of legacy it is really difficult to bend the organisation to work in a different way. So we’ve had to pick our battles, beginning where we can quickly have the most impact, and that is often the digital platforms.”

Broadcast, 2 Alamy; Ben Wright

ITV, and putting Channel 4 content on social media platforms like Snapchat; and Channel 4’s in-house digital content team in Leeds that drives engagement with its shows on social platforms.

In 2020, an extremely large-scale and complex programme resulted in the launch of BR4NDMATCH – described as “a pioneering collection of data-driven, digital ad products on All 4, offering advertisers unique targeting capabilities in a post-GDPR, cookieless environment on a TV video-on-demand player for the first time in the UK.” Sharma says digital is at the heart of most of this effort: “Each of the pillars in our Future4 strategy has two or three significantly large programmes underpinning it. All are in some shape or form to do with data and technology.”

All 4 is a major focus. During the pandemic its viewing figures rose by a remarkable 27 per cent, making it the UK’s biggest free streaming service.

“There’s a lot of work being done within All 4 platforms,” says Sharma. “There is work on personalisation and targeted advertising on the one hand, and then just improving the robustness of it and the viewer experience on the other side.”

To push through such significant change

Humphrey says that the BFI’s transformation effort is guided by a cultural mission “to increase the diversity of what’s available for people to watch”. That’s led the BFI to secure distribution on streaming platforms, and move from a rentals model to a subscription-based BFI Player.

That works much better for the audience, Humphrey says. “For a small monthly fee they can explore the entire BFI catalogue.”

The transition has also helped the government-supported BFI become self-sustaining. “We are now earning millions of pounds from streaming; five or six years ago, it was virtually zero.” Two

Four-part crime drama Deadwater Fell was one of Channel 4’s most popular series of 2020

in a short period of time also requires a comprehensive and effective approach to project – and portfolio – management, which is something that Sharma has been working on

other benefits have come from the digitisation of the film archive.

“We’re investing in the processes and workflows that sit behind our film collections. So, the BFI now has a world-leading digital preservation infrastructure for our digitised film assets.” And the creation of data and metadata has opened enormous potential for a much better understanding of Britain’s film heritage.

Project management plays an important role, says Humphrey.

“There’s a very strong set of ethics around how we work on our projects, making sure that things are delivered on time, to budget and meet user need.”

implementing, with some significant advances over the last six months.

“We call it The IMPACT Engine,” she says. “It’s a delivery mechanism.” The new approach includes elements such as governance, a universal language, business case reviews, recognition of roles and responsibilities, multidisciplinary working and just enough documentation – any one of which may have slipped by the wayside before.

It allows the company to prioritise and to make the benefits case for each piece of work, right up to executive level.

Lessons learned? “For me it would be about flexibility and adaptability.

For any change of this size and at this pace, you need to understand your stakeholders, and that not everything works for everybody. We can see where we want to get to, but it’s going to take a lot of effort and cultural change. Channel 4 is different, and while making this change, we want to maintain who we are.”

“For any change of this size and at this pace, you need to understand your stakeholders”

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HOW TO BE A HIGHLY EFFECTIVE SPONSOR

Drawing on recent executive education programmes with companies to improve sponsorship of their projects, Carl Gavin and Stuart Forsyth share their practical tips on how to get this critical role right

he latest edition of the APM Body of Knowledge defines a sponsor as the role that is “accountable for ensuring that the work is governed effectively and delivers the objectives that meet identified needs”. They champion the work and own both the business case and the realisation of the benefits and value resulting from the project, programme or portfolio. Ultimately, they are the person with executive oversight for the work. Depending on the organisation, the role of the sponsor may correspond with line management responsibilities or be an appointed role.

The APM Body of Knowledge describes the role of sponsor as ‘critical’ and ‘crucial’ in equal measure, and this is supported by regular surveys and reports by professional project management bodies that conclude that active and supportive sponsorship is a significant factor in delivering successful projects, programmes and portfolios – with the sponsor providing the leadership and political influence to ensure that the work delivers on its promises.

From our experience in delivering executive education programmes focused on improving project, programme and portfolio leadership, we have seen a plethora of sponsorship challenges. These include not only a lack of definition in what is expected

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from a sponsor, but also poor behaviour on their part, including ignorance of the project or, at the other extreme, micromanagement.

Here, we offer sponsors practical advice on how to be active, engaged and effective.

From our experience, most sponsors want to be successful in their role, but a lack of clarity and support in their organisation has hindered them.

SUBS

a good role model. Senior 1theBe leaders often do not realise huge impact of what they say

4

and do on the behaviours of those lower down the organisation.

Being a behavioural role model and setting the right tone for the project team can influence how many others behave. For example, encourage open, regular and honest communication; use positive, constructive language, even when challenging poor project performance; and be tolerant of mistakes and encourage a culture of learning from such mistakes.

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2

Champion good sponsorship practices.

How does your organisation communicate a common definition and understanding of the role of the sponsor? How are sponsors selected for projects? How are they trained?

What is the authority given to sponsors? How does your organisation ensure that sponsors demonstrate the right behaviours? How is the impact of sponsors measured? If your organisation is lacking in any of these areas, champion their improvement. Persuade your fellow senior leaders of the need to establish clarity, and define and document the role of the sponsor and practices that support effective sponsorship.

6

3

Provide the necessary resources. Champion 7 the project in acquiring the resources it needs.

Projects operating in a portfolio environment

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Get involved as early as possible. The early stages of a project or programme are critical to its eventual success – a common theme we hear from our executive education delegates is that ‘projects rarely go wrong, they start wrong’. Their eventual success depends on developing an understanding of the project or programme as much as practicable, as early as possible: the goals and objectives; the process for achieving them; the resources to be deployed; and how all of the elements of the project interact with one another.

The sponsor has a key role to play in ensuring this ‘front-end loading’ is achieved, the business case is robust and viable, and thorough planning and definition has been done.

If you cannot commit to active involvement, then don’t be the sponsor.

If you are too busy, decline the role – a busy sponsor is often an absent sponsor, and an absent sponsor amounts to no sponsorship.

Also, if you lack interest in the project, you will be unlikely to fully engage with it, so we advise declining the role. If being appointed as the sponsor is unavoidable, consider delegating the responsibility of the role – but not the ultimate accountability – to a ‘sponsor’s agent’, who can act on your behalf.

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5

Build and maintain effective relationships. Regularly interact with your project manager and team, with the aim of building strong working relationships – aim to talk often and encourage a culture of open communication (see point 6, below).

Be a supportive leader and coach; develop and help build the team. A good working relationship with the project manager, based on mutual trust, is essential.

Receive ‘truth to power’. Stay up-todate on the status of the project – don’t wait until scheduled formal project reviews for updates on performance and possibly unwelcome surprises. Encourage informal reviews to help keep up with progress and understand any issues. Encourage honest reporting of project status and make it safe to ‘speak truth to power’. The flipside of this is the open and measured receiving of that truth.

Be accessible and ensure that there are no adverse repercussions for raising issues and concerns. If project team members fear that doing so will be career-limiting, they won’t do it, and problems will remain hidden.

Dr Carl Gavin is a senior lecturer in project management at Alliance Manchester Business School (AMBS), University of Manchester.

Professor Stuart Forsyth is an honorary professor at AMBS, and director, advanced sensors, at BAE Systems Air

can suffer from pressures in securing capable resources, each project competing with others for resource. A key aspect of the sponsor’s role is championing the cause of the project within the organisation to ensure it receives the appropriate priority. This could be during project set-up or it could be in response to emergent issues during delivery. Either way, this aspect of the role is fundamental to project success.

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8

Help the project team by anticipating surprises. In their anxiety to deliver, good people working hard to meet demanding goals can fail to spot the signs of failure. Sponsors operate at a level – and with a perspective based on business experience and commercial acumen – where they may spot early-warning signs that the project team doesn’t. Liaising regularly with stakeholders or spending time with customers, for example, can help identify potential issues. Encourage discussion of potential early-warning signs, be they based on hard data or ‘gut feel’, in the project team.

Act when the project needs 9 support. Even with the best practical planning, issues will

COMMON SPONSORSHIP CHALLENGES O The role of the sponsor is often not clearly defined, with sponsors not knowing what is expected of them and project teams not knowing what to expect of their sponsor.

O Often sponsors are not very involved in their assigned project or programme and do not know much about them – this is often due to the sponsor role being in addition to their day-to-day leadership responsibilities, and they simply lack the time to be an active and engaged sponsor.

O At the other extreme, sometimes the sponsor is too involved in the project or programme and acts more like a higher-level project manager, interfering in the day-to-day project management – and in some cases we have seen, bypassing the project manager to instruct the project team members.

O Poor behaviours from sponsors, such as receiving news about poor project performance badly.

O Some people are nominated to be sponsors without their knowledge, or reluctantly accept the role, and in some cases reject the role and its accompanying accountabilities.

O There is often no formal on-boarding and training of sponsors, and a reluctance in organisations to measure and address the performance and impact of sponsors.

O With the sponsor being a senior leadership role, there is often an unwillingness by those less senior in the organisation to inform and educate their own bosses on how sponsors should act.

emerge during project delivery. Use your seniority and influence to help fix problems and clear obstacles, particularly in those areas where the influence of the project manager and team does not reach; for example, managing senior internal and external stakeholders.

Be the champion and advocate for the project, demonstrating a willingness to step in and help when needed. Acknowledging that project management is a stressful profession, we recommend monitoring the wellbeing of the project manager and team and acting decisively if you see signs of stress or burnout.

10

Be accountable for the results. Own the business case, the planning, the delivery and the results. The sponsor can delegate responsibility for the project to the project manager, but not the ultimate accountability. Acknowledge and demonstrate this accountability by being actively involved in the project and ensuring its success.

Leadership has been researched extensively over the past decade, with the overwhelming conclusion that competent leadership is essential for successful projects. The sponsor holds a unique and critical leadership role: owning the vision and results; inspiring, motivating and supporting the team; and fostering collaboration and commitment with stakeholders – creating the environment where projects succeed and deliver on promises.

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David Eggleton, co-author of upcoming APM research

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ost organisations are extremely good at managing their traditional assets – things that are tangible like land, labour and capital. But what about intangible assets? Often, the most valuable assets are in your employees’ heads, but how can you transfer what they know?

There are different types of knowledge.

It can be explicitly codified knowledge in physical or digital form (such as reports or books), or it can be tacit, in an experiential form. Tacit knowledge is much more challenging to transfer because you gain it through experience – it’s just like riding a bike. You can’t just read a book and start riding a bike; you learn it by doing it. It’s more personalised and subjective than codified knowledge, and much more challenging to share.

How important is knowledge management to project success?

How knowledge management can improve project outcomes

Fairly important

Knowledge isn’t just a single amorphous thing that can be easily transferred – it can be extremely hard to share. So how can we share the knowledge we’ve gained through our projects so that we can identify examples of best practice? Or, just as importantly, how can we identify what doesn’t work so well so we can avoid repeating mistakes? Some organisations have experimented with tacit knowledge databases so that people can identify and log skills that can then be taught in an apprenticeship arrangement.

As part of our research for an upcoming APM report looking at project success,

Nicholas Dacre and I have looked at the

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Slightly important

role of knowledge management as a way of improving successful project outcomes.

Knowledge management can be defined as the organisational activities facilitating the creation, documentation, storage, sharing and application of knowledge the organisation collectively owns. Our survey found that knowledge management is a very important condition for project success, with 89 per cent of respondents considering it ‘important’ or ‘very important’. Learning from past projects was identified as the key aspect to knowledge management practices.

Research shows that there are extensive organisational and individual benefits for project teams that engage with knowledge management processes. Documenting lessons learned during the project, as well as in postproject reviews, can lead to organisational learning, better decision-making and improved project management practices in the future.

Effective documentation and storage mean that project professionals from different teams, or even different parts of the organisation, can access that knowledge to avoid pitfalls in their own projects.

Don’t reinvent the wheel Important

Very important

This sounds like an obvious thing to do, but despite the importance attached to knowledge management, we found that organisations have significant challenges with the process.

Many keep on reinventing the wheel to solve a problem that keeps cropping up because they didn’t learn from other projects. This frequently wasn’t because the documents didn’t exist; it’s that they couldn’t be found.

Source: upcoming APM research

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on project success, explains just how critical knowledge management is in making projects fly

Knowledge, 1

Such a lack of knowledge dissemination is an issue of major importance, as storing knowledge that is not then used is essentially wasted time and resources. So don’t just write these lessons learned reports with specialist jargon and leave it on your hard drive never to be read by anyone – make sure people can find, download, open and understand them, and ideally, if they implement the work, that it gets the right results. Make your knowledge FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reproducible). It may sound straightforward to codify your knowledge and make sure other people learn, but many of our research interviewees said it is fiendishly difficult.

Communities of practice Many participants emphasised the importance of having communities of practice for transferring tacit knowledge. These are also worth considering as a people-centric way of transferring tacit knowledge. We’ve heard so many people say they want such a community, but that they didn’t quite know what it was that they wanted. According to my favourite knowledge management textbook (Knowledge Management in Organisations by Hislop, Bosua et al), a community of practice is simply a group of people with a common interest, common values and a common body of knowledge.

They could be described as not particularly different from an APM Specific Interest Group.

They can be thought of as being a bit like an onion – a series of layers with a core team at the centre and increasingly peripheral players as you get further away. But the most valuable

people aren’t at the centre of the onion – they all speak the same language and share the same values. It’s those at the edges who are members of multiple communities who are the most valuable and the most interesting to us. These ‘boundary spanners’ can be members of several communities and bring in new knowledge and ideas. How can you use this concept?

You could consider including team members with a designated knowledge management role to act as a boundary spanner between different projects as part of the project management office. This requires an exceptionally curious person who gets on well with all sorts of people and who isn’t afraid to ask seemingly obvious or awkward questions. View them as pollinators, moving between several projects with similar characteristics to share ideas or knowledge so that every project within the portfolio gets the benefit of the same knowledge.

‘Boundary spanners’ can be members of several communities and bring in new knowledge and ideas

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There was a discussion during the semi-structured research interviews around the level of commitment when it comes to knowledge management activities. This isn’t particularly surprising, as we found out when starting our research; starting a project is inherently exciting, anything seems possible and the deadline seems to stretch further than you can imagine. You just want to throw yourself into it, and as a result, project teams are inclined to start projects without drawing on past experiences. Equally, when you’ve finished the project, you’re exhausted and maybe even a bit sick of it and you just want to move onto the next big thing, so you forget to document lessons learned. It was suggested that investing resources in embedding knowledge management in the project life cycle could yield better outcomes.

It’s quite difficult to know what knowledge is valuable and needs to be stored, and what knowledge can be safely filed in the bin.

Many new innovations are a result of crossfertilisation of different ideas coming together, so it is easy to think that it is best to collect everything. But there is a trade-off to be made between storing as much knowledge as possible that might be useful, and the costs of storing what is ultimately superfluous. It can be tough to make sure all the knowledge management puzzle pieces are there at the start of your project, as quite a lot of it depends on your organisation.

Key players

There are a few key players for embedding the process of knowledge management within your organisation. The first is HR; the second is IT. While we might wish that everyone would share their knowledge freely, many people face a dilemma between sharing knowledge to benefit everyone and hoarding it to protect themselves in future. HR can provide incentives to promote altruistic practice through normal recruitment and selection practices, job design or through the appraisal system. IT can help with both codified and tacit knowledge management.

There is a trade-off to be made between storing as much knowledge as possible that might be useful, and the costs of storing what is ultimately superfluous Dr David Eggleton is a lecturer in project management with innovation studies at the University of Sussex, and is co-author with Professor Nicholas Dacre of upcoming APM research on project success

For codified knowledge, they can capture that knowledge and make it available on your organisation’s intranet, and as long as it’s wellindexed, this can be incredibly useful.

With tacit knowledge, which is much harder to share, a database that maps the expertise to individuals or groups is the better way to go, so people know who to talk to. But there’s one key factor that will affect how well you can perform: your corporate culture. If your corporate culture is one that tends to guard information, it can be much harder to get your colleagues to share knowledge, compared to one where knowledge sharing is culturally accepted and expected. You can be part of creating the cultural shift towards a knowledge-sharing organisation, but it will be a long, challenging process, although the benefits will be worth it for the projects in your portfolio.

Ultimately, these factors are all within your control as a project professional. Provided you are open and honest with your colleagues and share your reports, you are managing your knowledge. It also gives you an excuse to have coffee or Zoom calls with unusual people in your organisation – who knows what knowledge you might gain?

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“I’m in doubt as to what the best leadership approach is with my team. Should I be soft or challenging, or somewhere in between?

How do I achieve the perfect balance?”

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Susanne Madsen is an internationally recognised project leadership coach, trainer and consultant. She is the author of The Project Management Coaching Workbook and The Power of Project Leadership (second edition now available). For more information, visit www.susannemadsen.com

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The quick answer is that your leadership approach should be flexible enough to adjust to the person you are leading in any given situation on any given project.

When leading a person who lacks confidence and skills, you need to display more of your softer side, whereas someone who is very confident and knowledgeable would respond better to a more challenging approach.

Serve, command or both?

Most team members fall somewhere in between. They need a healthy mix of support and challenge from their manager to perform and generate the best results. This means you should provide all the support and nurture your team needs to deliver and grow, while simultaneously setting high standards and expecting the best. In other words, you must learn to access your empowering yin-style of serving others, and at the same time access your commanding yang-style.

Yin symbolises the feminine elements such as listening,

supporting, coaching, maintaining stability and praising people for a job well done. These characteristics are hugely important when establishing and leading a team, especially in the early days when people don’t yet trust their own abilities. You can use your supportive yin side to build your team’s confidence and develop skills that are lacking.

Yin to enable, yang to challenge

Using your yin style, you would want to understand what drives and motivates each member of the team and what type of help they each need. Connect with people one-to-one, understanding their position and assisting them in growing and developing. At a team level, encourage collaboration and provide a safe environment for team members to work together and come up with their own solutions.

Yin leadership is enabling and is concerned with making it possible for others to flourish and contribute.

Yang, on the other hand, symbolises the masculine element, which is challenging, demanding and factual.

This side of leadership sets a high standard and expects the team to deliver to it. To access your yang side, provide the team with a strong sense of direction, set the bar high and encourage action and results.

Ask probing questions regarding assumptions, solutions and schedules, and hold your team to account. Be assertive when needed and challenge your team to deliver to the best of its ability.

The more confident and able your team is, the better it will respond to your challenges.

Imbalances in yin and yang

Most project managers have a preference for either yin or yang.

They have developed a style where either the yin or the yang element has grown to dominate. If you end up with too much yang, and very little yin, you will create stress around you. You will demand a lot but not give the team the security, confidence and space it needs to perform. On the other hand, if you only use yin, you run the risk of being too soft and nice and ending up with a team that’s underperforming.

In summary, your team needs a dynamic tension of both yin and yang to perform and thrive. Adjust how much of each element you use relative to how confident and able each team member is. In general, your leadership approach shouldn’t be ‘either/or’ but ‘and’. You must be enabling and demanding; flexible and tough; supportive and challenging.

When you combine yin and yang in this holistic way, you become a results-oriented project leader who cares about people and who involves them in the decisions that affect them. Then you become a leader who challenges the team to continuously improve and innovate while stepping back and enabling them to do so.

Do you have a question for Susanne?

Email mail@susannemadsen.com

READER OFFER Enjoy a 25 per cent discount on The Power of Project Leadership, second edition, when you order the book from Kogan Page (www.koganpage. com). Quote code: PROJ25

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ollaboration is a core requirement for effective project management, but it has been made more challenging in the past year. We can’t rely on co-located teams sparking off one another.

Jumping on a train or plane to attend project workshops or to meet team members and stakeholders is impossible. I’ve spent a little time considering how we’ve tried to support high-quality collaboration while dealing with the inability to meet face-to-face. Here are the four biggest lessons we’ve learnt.

LESSON 1 Make the time to pass the time This might sound obvious, but it can be easy to miss, and it takes effort and discipline to maintain in the longer term. At AstraZeneca, in ‘normal times’ we follow the Swedish tradition of fika – an informal gathering with coffee and something to eat at least once a week. During lockdowns, we have put in place virtual fikas – some small and some larger for whole offices.

People share cake recipes, tips on getting a good cup of coffee at home and Netflix recommendations. This has helped disparate teams to feel connected.

Use the team members who are great organisers to make sure there’s a rota for engagement and a range of events, from the very informal to guest speakers. Different types of events will work for or appeal to different people, so don’t expect everyone to

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attend everything, but make them appealing enough that you get a good attendance. Ask people what works and what doesn’t. Change it periodically to keep it fresh. This has been really useful in getting new team members onboarded, as it helps to maintain our culture and connectedness.

At the beginning of project meetings, allow time for a proper check-in. Let’s face it – most meetings can cope with a five-minute delay to the start of formal proceedings. If it’s a larger meeting, use some real-time technology to take the temperature and to understand people’s priorities for the session. You also need to be prepared to flex the agenda in response to the feedback and/or follow up on it afterwards. If someone is quiet, check in with them outside of the meeting.

LESSON 2 Rethink how you collaborate Longer team meetings or project sessions cannot just be turned from in-person, day-long events into an online version. If you can use a facilitator to run the session (a project manager or analyst from another project or team can be great), so that you can genuinely participate, so much the better. We have found that you can’t expect high-quality collaboration for more than about two hours. Even within that time period, we break it up into plenary and smaller group sessions. If a longer time frame is needed, we plan the sessions over the course of a few

Meeting face-to-face for a coffee and something to eat, fika-style, is a good practice to adopt once we’re back in the office

Collaboration, 1

LESSON 3 Use the technology, but don’t be a slave to it

days, giving people time at the beginning of the new sessions to recap on the progress in the first couple of sessions.

When it comes to managing senior stakeholders, normally I’d rely on a quiet coffee periodically with them to understand their priorities and worries. This has historically allowed me to steer projects more effectively, addressing niggles before they become issues.

For my senior stakeholders now, I’ve scheduled regular check-ins, usually fortnightly, for us to chat about progress and what’s coming up. I’m going to carry this on when we go back to more office-based working, as it’s been good to have a little more structure.

Even if your project isn’t agile, frequent stand-ups (virtual or real) can help to keep people connected and build team spirit.

Finally, being a project professional can be lonely. Use your network to develop the support for the days when you want to bounce ideas off someone outside the project. A different perspective can help with problem-solving.

Having back-to-back Teams/Zoom/Skype meetings is exhausting. We typically allow five or 10 minutes at the end to let everyone regroup before their next meeting. Outlook allows you to automatically schedule meetings that finish early. A brief break allows people to be present and to collaborate more. It’s hard to engage if you’re gasping for a cup of tea and have been tethered to your laptop for hours.

Ideally, block out time so that individuals aren’t always on calls if they don’t have to be.

Collaboration software is coming on in leaps and bounds and is essential. Of course, there are the meeting platforms, and we have used Microsoft Teams to allow us to share project documentation as well. We also use Jira for many of our projects, including for the creation of Kanban boards, tracking of detailed requirements and testing and RAID management. We have our PPM tool, which is used for consistent reporting across the portfolio and financial tracking.

To aid in collaboration, we use Slido a lot in meetings, especially for temperature checking and fun quizzes.

I’m a big fan of ThoughtExchange – a tool that allows you to crowdsource information about priorities. And we’ve just used Miro effectively for a strategy planning session. If bringing in a new technology, give people time

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to become familiar with it. We offered a mini training session on Miro prior to the strategy session, which was worthwhile.

Sometimes, a plain old phone call can be better for having a chat – people can be more open. Find out what works for your team and how they prefer to connect. We also ensure that they’ve got the hardware to make collaboration at home easier.

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LESSON 4 Make the global local

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Our project teams are nearly all truly global – from Kuala Lumpur to Guadalajara, Gothenburg to Sydney. Collaboration across time zones, cultures and languages takes huge effort and commitment. This isn’t any different to preCovid times, but we’ve put more effort into the collaboration as a result of the pandemic – and we’ll be keeping a lot of these new methods once life becomes a little more normal.

First, understand where team members are located – this is not always obvious. I made the mistake of assuming a colleague with a strong US accent was working in our offices in Delaware or Maryland. So, I arranged meetings at 6pm UK time, thinking that I was being helpful. He’s actually based in Cambridge, England. I had inadvertently encroached on his evening with his family. I should have checked in and not made an assumption.

For team meetings, we try to find a slot for regular catch-ups that work for most people and be creative to meet the challenges. One of my current projects has team members in Chennai, Gothenburg, Macclesfield, Wilmington and Guadalajara. We offer team members in Chennai the opportunity to time-shift to enable collaboration, which means that we have about three hours per day for collaboration.

To support them, we ensure that there is wider support in place – covering travel to the offices out of hours, catering and shift premiums.

This does cost money, but if it’s important to the project, it is worth it. If you can’t have overlapping time, schedule two or more separate slots so that all team members can be engaged in sessions.

Use collaboration sessions carefully – particularly if people are logging on early or staying late, don’t be disrespectful of their commitment and give them notice to allow them to plan it into their lives. Only schedule meetings if engagement is needed. If it’s a straightforward information cascade, then find a different way (a Teams chat, an email, intranet posts or a recorded meeting are all possible

Use collaboration sessions carefully – particularly if people are logging on early or staying late, don’t be disrespectful of their commitment and give them notice to allow them to plan it into their lives and allow people to find things out without needing to flex their working hours). Don’t allow sessions to overrun and cancel them if they’re no longer required.

Spend time to understand the local situation – is that area in lockdown? Do they still go to the office? How is the weather? This can be a lot more serious than just a bit of drizzle in the UK. My colleagues in Chennai were struggling with cyclones and lockdown last year. We ensured that the teams working with Chennai team members got good updates on the cyclone and it was part of the leadership team briefings on a daily basis.

Some effort to understand language and culture goes a long way. Our working language in most countries is English. As a native English speaker, I’m therefore hugely privileged. Given that privilege, it takes only a little effort to learn a little of the language and holidays and culture of the team members I’m working with. At the very least, it will mean that my project plans will take account of important religious and national holidays. But, more importantly, it means I can genuinely connect with the wider team. And, for when we can all travel again, I’ve learnt a new skill.*

The pandemic has turned fika into a virtual event, but it can still work well

*Disclaimer – my Swedish is still VERY ropey

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MANAGE A MULTIGE N Project manager David Dulston (a millennial) gives his dos and

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GENERATION Z, AGE 6–24

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anaging cross-generational teams can be challenging, but how you approach generational differences really does matter when it comes to improving project delivery. With potentially four different generations to lead, it can be hard to adapt to meet differing requirements. It’s also important to understand the previous ‘silent’ generation, who would have managed the ‘baby boomers’ and ‘Generation X’. Ultimately, we know that everyone is different and this isn’t about putting people into a box, but as long as you consider generational differences and how people’s behaviour can be influenced, your projects will be in the hands of leaders who are prepared to lead, adapt and manage teams more effectively. Hopefully this will result in higher morale, which will pave the way for improved (and easier) project delivery.

Here are my observations of the different generations and the tips I’ve gleaned on how best to manage them.

KEY DRIVERS Gen Z grew up with access to technology that other generations never believed would even exist, so they like to be at the forefront of technology. Gen Z also support diversity (ie they don’t like being treated like a number). Having grown up with instant access to information, they like feedback quickly. Gen Z will work hard if they feel trusted, and they value independence.

Gen Z also look at life in a global sense – they will be happy to relocate and do not see borders as an issue.

WHAT THEY DO AND DON’T LIKE Gen Z are the youngest in the workplace, so it can be difficult for more experienced generations to delegate to them without being interpreted as patronising. Too much support will not give Gen Z the challenge they crave. I’ve found that, when they get stuck, they will come to you for help, but to get the best results, challenge them to find a solution themselves. They will earn a sense of achievement, which is key to their happiness.

KEY POINTS TO REMEMBER O They are independent and enjoy having responsibility.

O Do not micromanage them.

O Keep them challenged, and ensure continual growth through training courses, etc.

O Reward them and provide feedback.

O They may perform better if managed by a millennial.

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MILLENNIALS, AGE 25–40 KEY DRIVERS Millennials grew up with technology but, unlike Gen Z, they didn’t get the full benefit of technological advancements until they reached working age. Millennials appreciate being heard and supported by strong and compassionate leaders, and if they don’t feel supported, they will quickly lose interest in their work. To turn a situation like this around (or prevent it from happening), team members who are not getting support from their line manager will require substitute support. As a project manager, I arrange regular meetings with key millennials to just talk and ask how they feel, as emotional intelligence is high within this generation.

Building a more personal relationship is key.

WHAT THEY DO AND DON’T LIKE Millennials love achievement and immediate feedback. A simple ‘good job’ helps build a relationship. Millennials have a different view of working hours and enjoy having flexibility. I provide flexibility by setting a clear deadline for a task, then allow them to decide how they will achieve the overall aim. Millennials prefer to work ‘their way’ and are results driven. They will also trust you more if you open up to them, so provide honest feedback – good or bad – and they will respect you more.

KEY POINTS TO REMEMBER O Keep them challenged.

O Create personal relationships – build trust with informal catch-ups and make the effort.

O Quick feedback is vital.

O Always explain why and how it fits with the wider strategy – they like to know that what they do is making a difference.

O Show you appreciate them.

O Ensure that they have a good work/life balance – I do this by arranging team meals/lunches, etc.

O Some can show competitive tendencies, so keep watch to make sure this isn’t disruptive.

do

Multigenerational, 1

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don’ts for getting the best from every generation GENERATION X, AGES 41–56 KEY DRIVERS This generation like to challenge the status quo. I find that people from this generation whom I have managed usually have a large amount of experience, which can curb their ability to accept different ways of working. Gen X have worked closely with baby boomers, so traits of that generation can sometimes appear (ie ‘you do as you are told by management’). Being a millennial can create obvious challenges in leading Gen Xers. My advice is to first create a safe environment for them to provide feedback, and second, ask for their opinion early on. Gen X will relish supporting younger generations and pass on their experience, but sometimes this can cause friction (if the individual is not very emotionally aware). I find that a straight and honest approach to feedback helps Gen Xers work better.

WHAT THEY DO AND DON’T LIKE Gen X hate micromanagement. Also, to them, age equals experience, so if they are being managed by a younger person, they may not respond well.

BABY BOOMERS, AGE 57–75 Baby boomers didn’t grow up with the technology that is used today; however, this doesn’t stop them from trying. This generation likes to be appreciated. I find I get the best results when I ask them to mentor or guide younger generations (just be careful they don’t use the techniques that were used on them by the ‘silent’ generation – ie ‘you will do as you are told’). Baby boomers are loyal and won’t move to another organisation as easily as a millennial would.

If you have baby boomers in your project, ensure you reduce any public embarrassment by giving criticism behind closed doors. Face-to-face feedback will get a better result – traditional approaches are preferred, so it can become a nuisance for you if you try ‘new ways of working’ within your project environment.

Like the baby boomers, the silent generation (age 76+) are hard-working and dedicated. The majority are now retired, but when the silent generation were working, things like equal rights were not hot topics and you were considered lucky to have a job – this mentality can sometimes been seen in baby boomers. In this instance, patience and reasoning may help.

KEY POINTS TO REMEMBER O They will ask questions and be sceptical of decisions being made. Show that you appreciate their view.

O Create a relationship and a safe space to develop trust.

O Do not try using positional power unless absolutely necessary.

O Gen Xers do not like change that will affect their personal interests; if this does happen, sit down and talk it through.

O They are driven by personal and professional development and you can use this – eg ‘it will help your promotion if you complete this project’ (but don’t promise things that are out of your control).

O Gen Xers were managed by baby boomers and inherited the ‘just do it, and no questions’ approach. This may make things easier or harder (they may see that they have more positional power than you).

ADVICE ON RUNNING A MULTIGENERATIONAL MEETING O Don’t isolate certain generations by

using words like ‘younger’ or ‘old’.

O Depending on what you are trying to

achieve, try to discuss the topic with your peers prior to the meeting to avoid any surprises.

O Be clear and concise.

O If you want engagement, keep it structured and on topic. When discussion veers away from the key points, phrases like ‘let’s take that offline’ can help.

O Be careful not to belittle people in front of peers; this can damage relationships and trust.

O Try to predetermine difficult questions and prepare suitable answers (I ask my peers to review for me for feedback).

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The following individuals make up the latest cohort to achieve Chartered Project Professional status with APM. Congratulations to you all, from those based in the US and the UK to those in India and China! Full details of the criteria for achieving chartered status and the routes to get there can be found at apm.org.uk/chartered-standard, where you can also view the full Register of Chartered Project Professionals.

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First name

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Surname

Country

Daniel

Collins

UK

Edmund

Adrian

MYS

Mark

Collymore

UK

Nikhil

Agarwal

QAT

Laura

Coulthard

UK

Andrew

Allen

UK

Sara

Courtenay

AUS

Paul

Allen

UK

Helen

Cox

UK

Jennifer

Anand

BRN

Nicola

Coxall

UK

Phil

Anderson

US

Trevor

Crowe

UK

Okechukwu

Anozie

NGA

Babatunde

Daniyan

NGA

Gaia

Antoniucci

AUS

Mary

Darcey

UK

Stuart

Arnott

UK

Jennifer

Davies

UK

Bode

Asabi

UK

Lee

Davis

US

Stephen

Baker

UK

Paul

Davis

UK

Randy

Barber

US

Cees

De Bruin

NLD

Gabriela

Barboza

US

Alejandro

de Jong

US

Jack

Bayliss

UK

Carel

de Loe

NLD

David

Baynes

UK

Vas

Detkin

NLD

John

Betterton

UK

Ramkee

Devarayasamudram

US

Stacey

Bishop

UK

Stephen

Dodd

UK

Harold

Boerrigter

NLD

Jim

Downie

UK

William

Bolam

UK

Sean

Eckerty

US

Matthew

Bond

UK

David

Emms

UK

David

Bowe

UK

Babak

Erfani MBE

UK

Tom

Bowers

UK

Eelke

Focke

NLD

Alasdair

Brackenridge

UK

Robert

Foietta

UK

Paul

Bradley

UK

Michael

Foss

UK

Erik

Brogtrop

NLD

Jose Antonio

Garcia

CAN

Stephen

Brown

UK

Jim

Gast

NLD

Thomas

Bruno

UK

Venkat

Ghantala

AUS

Gerardo

Burgos

US

Jan Willem

Goedbloed

NLD

Bethany

Cann

UK

Jeff

Gorcester

NLD

Louise

Cann

UK

Dougal

Grant

CHN

Aveek

Chakraborty

IND

Guy

Granville

UK

Marc

Cleuziou

GER

Benjamin

Greig

AUS

Vilma

Colaco

IND

David

Grove

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Rama Krishna Siva

Gunturi

IND

Zia Syed

Haider

SGP

Maggie

Halpin

UK

James

Hanson

UK

Peter

Harrison

UK

Victoria

Harrop

UK

Mark

Harvey

UK

Imrul

Hassan

UK

Pedram

Hedayati-Sohani

CAN

Oscar

Herdocia

US

Paul

Hilton

UK

Richard

Hofmann

NLD

Adam

Holliday

UK

Robert

Huggins

UK

Ruqaiya

Isa

UK

Chinedu

Iwu

NGA

Amrit

Jassal

UK

Alison

Jones

NLD

Maria

Jones

UK

Hari

Kannan

AUS

Suresh

Kavia

UK

Lorna

Kennedy

UK

Amjad

Khalifeh

QAT

Oliver

King

AUS

Barry

Knight

UK

Kevin

Knott

UK

Rob

Knox

UK

Alexander

Kodjaian

UK

Olaf

Koot

NLD

Beng-Kiat

Kueh

MYS

Krishna

Kumar

IND

Flora

Law

UK

Michael

Lee

UK

ChPPs, 1 Joost

Lemmens

NLD

Tony

Noakes

UK

Mark

Swiggs

IN

Kirsten

Leverton

UK

Robbert

Nonhof

NLD

Charlotte

Taylor

UK

Peter

Lewis

UK

Lawrence

Odey

NGA

Paul

Tims

UK

Han Liang (Victor)

Liew

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Samuel

Okere

UK

Anna

Tyler-Revell

UK

Andrea

Liverani

US

Colin

ONeill

UK

Iwona

Urbanek

UAE

Mark

Lomas

HKG

Angela Susan

Otton

UK

Sjarel

van de Lisdonk

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Wilfried

Maas

NLD

Darren

Owen

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Michelle

Van der Duin

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Rajagopal

Padmanabhan

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Julian

van der Merwe

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Chirag

Parmar

UK

Maaike

van der Werf

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Sohail

Patel

UK

Edith

van Dijk

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James

Peel

UK

Ronald

van Elst

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Laura

Pellington-Woodrow

UK

Vincent

van Engelen

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Jennifer

Pemberton

UK

Rutger

van Spaendonck

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Mico

Peric

UAE

Folkert

Visser

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Muralidhar

Pillai

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Smitha

Viswanathan

UK

Thomas

Pink

UK

Natalie

Waddie

UK

Daniel

Pollitt

UK

Peter

Wallis

UK

Lynden

Potter

UK

Mike

Walsh

UK

Nerys

Price

UK

Polli

Watkin

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Neil

Proctor

UK

Becky

Watson

UK

Shanker

Punn

UK

Mark

Wealthall

UK

Tony

Rai

UK

Mike

Webb

UK

Aaron

Ratchford

UK

Rebecca

Wells

UK

Amjid

Raza

UK

Lynn

Westbrook-Rushton

UK

Ashley

Redmond

UK

Edward

Wheeler

UK

Stephen

Reville

UK

Robert

White

US

Mhairi

Mackenzie

UK

Ranieri

Maglione

UK

Sanjaya

Maktedar

OMN

Rama

Manattpolat

IND

Ulhas

Mankame

IND

David

Marsh

UK

Rob

Mashford

UK

Claire

McArtney

UK

Gordon

McCallum

UK

Christina

McCormack

UK

John

McGlynn

UK

Ryan

McKenzie

AUS

Angus

Mclean

CAN

Craig

McNaughton

UK

Danielle

Melhuish

UK

Flavio

Meneses

UK

Joseph

Miller

UK

Fabio

Modesti Orsini de Castro

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Wim

Moelker

NLD

Mark

Robinson

OMN

Todd

Whittemore

SGP

Musa

Mohammed

NGA

Louisa

Rutlidge

UK

Emma

Wilde

UK

Barry

Monk

UK

Roslan

Schofield

US

Beth

Willoughby

UK

Pascal

Montoulives

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James

Scholes

UK

Bruce

Wilson

UK

Gayle

Morrice

UK

Samirkumar

Shah

AUS

Bihua

Yuan

CHN

Catriona

Morrison

UK

Richard

Slack

UK

Frank

Zhang

CAN

Jay

Moser

US

Brian

Slessor

NLD

James

Mould

UK

Gareth

Slocombe

UK

Christian

Muir

UK

Kelly

Snowdon

UK

Lawrence

Myatt

UK

Stephen

Speirs

UK

Medhat

Nabet

UAE

Nina

Stanley

UK

Muthusubramanian

Nallaperumal

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Graeme

Stewart

UK

Anthony

Nicol

UK

Adeyemi Misbau

Suara

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RISING STAR VERSION

PEER TO PEER

HOW TO REPRO OP SUBS

USE YOUR SMARTS TO FLY HIGH (AND FIGHT SEXISM ALONG THE WAY)

ART

Emma Regulski faced discrimination in the oil sector, but

tells Charles Orton-Jones how she turned the experience into a positive and is now excelling in consultancy PRODUCTION CLIENT

E

mma Regulski adores being a project manager. In her spare time she visits schools as a STEM spokesperson and is an APM ambassador. Her career path is stellar, and in 2019, she became Young Professional of the Year at management consultancy Faithful + Gould, where she works as a programme manager in construction. So it’s troubling that during our interview she breaks off from her career highlights to flag up a lowlight.

Left out at sea “I don’t think anyone would be surprised to hear that I have professionally experienced bias because of my age and gender, something I imagine many readers can relate to,” says Regulski. “I have routinely been underestimated and have had to outperform my male counterparts to even be seated at the same table as them.”

Workplace interactions were sometimes marred by sexist comments. “The perception of my age and gender is still a big thing,” she says, furious. “People have made a judgement based on my appearance, that I’m female and youngish. It’s dismissive of someone’s talent to take physical appearance as what defines them. I’ve had people unexpectedly make inappropriate comments in interviews, meetings, in one-to-ones – or just passively. I have been left speechless when I have been asked about my relationship status or my age

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in interviews, and received playful comments about fulfilling a secretarial position when in fact I was the only member of my project team with a technical qualification.”

At the start of her career, she worked in the oil industry. “It’s quite polarised in terms of diversity and gender,” says Regulski. “For a period while I was offshore on a project there were 214 men and one other woman. If I ask you to picture a typical offshore worker, you will not picture a 26-year-old female. In industries like oil and gas, and to an extent construction, I was not the norm, and this impacted my progression. Even at a basic level, companybranded offshore PPE coveralls came in male sizing only.”

It’s an uncomfortable reminder that the oil industry (and project management within this world) still suffers from such sexist attitudes.

A report by APM in 2018 titled Where are the women in major project leadership? observed: “Women continue to be largely absent from leadership roles in major projects, disproportionately so for this sector.” Of 133 government major projects, only 22 per cent of the senior responsible officers were women.

The report also noted that sexist stereotypes persist. Women are held to different standards in interviews and are subject to likeability bias, and so face a social penalty for asserting themselves. Conversations around pay frequently disadvantage them too.

Rising star, 1

Emma Regulski Education: University of Glasgow, MA in history; Heriot-Watt University, MSc in strategic project management Career: Oil and gas sector, 2013–2015, 2017–2018; Faithful + Gould, 2018–present, programme manager Qualifications: CSCS, MSP Practitioner

Mike Wilkinson

Formulating a smart fightback “Treatment like that can stunt your growth and confidence professionally and personally,” says an irrepressible Regulski. Her reaction to the sexist behaviour (once the shock wore off) was twofold. “First, I thought, you know what is better than retaliating? It’s to get your work to speak for you. Professionally, I’ve had a colleague giving me an unpleasant nickname, and had that same person dismiss my work. For more senior management to see my work and recognise its quality, that gets the negative person behind you. They can see what you are capable of.”

The second was to act as a role model. “I could be jaded and treat other women badly who are coming up behind me. I could say that, since I had to make the tea and do the filing, they have to as well. But I would rather be a leader and an ally who says that was and is unacceptable.”

She left the oil industry, and the oversized financial rewards on offer, and found a more nurturing environment at Faithful + Gould. Here

she’s found an employer who knows how to get the best out of workers. “I got some really big, life-changing projects,” she says. “I’ve worked on big masterplans for universities. For a while I worked on an art gallery feasibility study project, and a sports facility project, which meant I got to learn all about football pitches.”

Finding an enlightened place to work The contrast with her early career experiences is obvious. Faithful + Gould is a strong investor in talent. “They have a great culture,” says Regulski. “Like buddy-up systems. When I joined, I always had a director with me. It’s the best way to learn, while providing the best service to the client.”

The diversity of projects has accelerated her career. “One of my key areas of advice

“If I ask you to picture a typical offshore worker, you will not picture a 26-year-old female.... In industries like oil and gas, and to an extent construction, I was not the norm”

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Rising star, 2

RISING STAR VERSION

PEER TO PEER

REPRO OP SUBS ART PRODUCTION

for young project managers is to experience consultancy. Particularly if you have high aspirations and want a career with growth, then consultancy gives you experience at such a fast rate. Before, I was a little stagnant with my learning. Now I get opportunities to work on private sector projects, public sector, art galleries, schools, office refurbishments and zero-carbon projects. Basically everything.

“Being a project manager is just so varied.

You never get bored. You spend so much of your life at work, why would you do something you didn’t enjoy?” In her view, when you love what you do, you are able to ride out the turbulent patches and enjoy the career. She bristles at the idea of having a career plan. “No, no plan. In interviews they’ll ask where you see yourself in five years’ time. I think that’s a really restrictive mindset. If you are focused on a single goal, then that stops you looking at other opportunities that might fast-track your career elsewhere. I think it’s best to stay open to all sorts of opportunities.”

Be proactive and learn from every situation

CLIENT

She instinctively offers advice. In particular, she recommends trying to find a role where it’s possible to be proactive and take control of large projects, rather than getting stuck in a position where the main duty is to respond to issues. “It’s possible to learn anything,” she says. “I’ve come into construction and had to learn how a building goes up, which is completely different to maintaining an oil and gas offshore installation. The difference is that oil and gas is reactive. You can plan to an extent, but generally you are dealing with things as they emerge. It’s like doing DIY on an old house; you start with good intentions but everything you touch makes it worse. In the end I left oil and gas to work in construction, as it’s going to make me a better project manager.”

Ultimately, she says, it’s possible to learn from any experience. Even sexist comments at work. She reflects: “Having gone through this experience makes me better, I think, at empathising with other people, who come from diverse backgrounds. I came out of it with a proactive response.”

“Being a project manager is just so varied... You spend so much of your life at work, why would you do something you didn’t enjoy?”

EMMA’S TIPS FOR A STELLAR CAREER

1

Work in a consultancy Working in a consultancy gives you exponential career growth. The exposure is just so good, so you’ll be learning as fast as possible. At some point, I imagine I’ll go to the client-side organisation, where it’s more about internal governance, but I’ll always be grateful for what I learned in the consultancy sector.

Stay on top of technical innovations There are so many things that can make your life easier.

PowerBI is a great innovation.

Some of the digital change forms are great as well.

There’s a lot you can do with Microsoft Teams, and Flow is fantastic. Because you don’t really want to be manually populating change forms and sending them to other people to work on, when instead you can have a complete flow, where information goes through a system. It’s our job to use technology to make project management more efficient and get rid of admin.

2

3

Leadership v management Understand the difference between the two, and when to deploy them. Before starting a full-time secondment to a client, I worked on various construction projects, which meant I had developed a personal management style that was task oriented and delivery focused. My client team were mostly SMEs, and I quickly learnt to amend my style towards situational leadership. I have since had the opportunity to develop

the programme environment, enabling individuals to challenge themselves and perform at their full potential by allowing innovation and blue-sky thinking.

Susanne Madsen did a very insightful presentation titled ‘Leadership Skills for Project Professionals’, which I highly recommend (see apm.org.uk).

Get good at communicating I’ve seen amazing project managers who are highly technically competent lose a positive relationship with a client because they can’t communicate. Once you’ve made that mistake you can’t recover. Good communication is about understanding your client, their needs and being able to break things down with no technical jargon.

Find a passion outside of work For me, it’s working in a shelter for a dog rescue charity at the weekend. I do home checks and phone interviews for potential fosters and adopters. Also, being a project manager means being good with money.

Another charity I worked with brought children over from the Chernobyl disaster area, hosted them for three weeks with a UK family, financed medical care and just gave them a happy experience.

When you apply project management to a cause like that, good things happen.

I raised £18,000 in a couple of years using my relationshipbuilding skill set.

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BEYOND THE JOB VERSION

PEER TO PEER

REPRO OP SUBS

PROJECT: BEING A SCUBA-DIVING INSTRUCTOR Grant Cooke runs his own scuba-diving training

ART

centre – here, he shares the adventure and mystery of his many underwater explorations

PRODUCTION

D

CLIENT

In his day job, Grant is a senior people and science project manager at AstraZeneca

iving is the closest most of us will get to feeling like we are in the weightlessness of space, and that feeling alone is reason enough to head out on a dive. But there is also an infinite amount of underwater treasures to be seen.

I have had the pleasure of diving the original HMS Invincible from the 1800s in the morning, and then diving the first-ever submarine in the afternoon. It was an incredibly surreal experience going from wooden decks with original cannons on the seabed to a small submarine that is entirely intact.

I started diving in my final year of university, where after one session in the pool I fell in love with the sport. Little did I know that it would complement my career path of project management, or that my career would be so beneficial and intrinsic to how I operate in the underwater world.

I became a qualified diver in 2014, then progressed to become a technical diver, where time and depth are increased. I went on to become an instructor and started a company called Cobalt Diving, teaching both recreational and technical diving disciplines. Technical diving enables you to dive deep shipwrecks, flooded abandoned mines and flooded cave systems that go on for many kilometres.

Diving has many common attributes with project management. Before starting a dive, detailed preparation and training are key. Like project management, practical and theoretical training are combined with experience to give confidence and competence. Getting in the water involves having an objective, such as

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exploring a shipwreck, hoping to see certain types of marine life or just to enjoy being in the water. Once the objective has been agreed, we need to understand what tools we need, what kit to take and who we are taking.

One of the best things about diving is choosing the appropriate equipment, as each option has advantages and disadvantages (such as being heavier on the surface but giving a longer time to explore underwater).

Choosing equipment is fundamentally an asset management exercise, where I need to bring different assets into play for different projects.

This is directly influenced by processes I have used on transformation projects, such as choosing the correct machinery on a building site to suit the reach lift parameters, or choosing the correct working methodology, like agile and engagement tools such as PESTLE analysis in an internal change programme.

Most equipment will cover most of the jobs, but at the sharp end of both diving and project management, it’s about realising when you need specialist tools for specialist or more risky work.

Precious time underwater When I began my professional career, the first skills that I began to rely on and continue to develop were communication and engagement.

I have spent a lot of time understanding different personality types and applying that information to communicate more effectively. When underwater, we need to be able to communicate effectively without being able to speak. Using pre-agreed plans with some standardised hand and light signals, we can accurately and quickly

BtJ, 1

The Aeolian Sky wreck

pass information around the team while still moving in a purposeful direction.

Through work, I have developed an ability to read changes in body language, which I use underwater, where vocal tone or facial cues aren’t tools I can use. Furthermore, the ability to lead through ambiguity within project management is directly linked to diving with low visibility or on an unknown shipwreck, for example. Leading people through the unknown takes confidence, openness to changing course and humility when things don’t go as planned.

Why divers need to be agile Project management has improved my capabilities as a diver. I use stage-gate methodology to portion out the different sections of the dive. Using stages allows me to assess where the ‘go’ and ‘no go’ indicators are, such as asset failures, changes in objective due to unforeseen circumstances and underwater issues. I use a risk management mentality to weigh up the challenges ahead and mitigate where possible by changing the tools or plan.

Most of the dives have an agile approach, where the main project management mindset is that the team is everything. A lot of the time, I will only see torch beams behind me. This is identical to trusting a project team when you only have small moments of contact.

Time underwater is as precious as time on a project, if not more, because we have a finite resource of gas on our backs. Having a grasp of time and what stage of the project you’re on is absolutely fundamental to both projects and dives.

Leading people through the unknown takes confidence, openness to changing course and humility when things don’t go as planned

I’ll put these thoughts into context by walking you through a dive I completed in 2020. Diving the Aeolian Sky wreck site out of Weymouth is a regular favourite. The wreck, a Greek cargo ship, is around 32m deep. On this occasion, I was the dive lead for two other divers. As Diver 1, my responsibilities included navigating and controlling timings. Diver 2’s role was to manage the surface marker buoy deployment (which allows us to have a safe, controlled ascent). Diver 3’s role as ‘the rock’ was the most important – to hold the depth for the series of depth stops when ascending. This allows Divers 1 and 2 to manage their roles far more easily, knowing they have a constant stable reference.

To start the dive day, we needed to get to the boat at strict leaving times defined by the tides. We got our individual kit set up and received instructions about when to jump off the boat from the skipper. Descending into the unknown, the wreck appeared out of the blue in all her glory. After coming to a stop hovering over the wreck, I signalled to the team and we started working our way towards our objectives using the planned route around the base of the wreck, moving in and out of the metal structures.

I found some new interesting structures and modified the plan on the go; the team behind me trusted in my decision-making. After seeing several thousand tonnes of metal, including a Land Rover chassis and locomotive items, I signalled the start of our ascent. Diver 2 already had his surface marker ready to launch. At this point, the risk is greatest, and the team must rely on each other to minimise risk and keep the ship steady as we ascend. After several minutes, we surfaced and signalled to the boat to pick us up.

We then packed up our kit and headed home, better for the dive and ready to get back into the water with more experience and motivation.

When one of your key risks is running out of air, you know you need to get your project management spot on

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the Dig, 1 VERSION REPRO OP

OFFLINE

Where project management meets popular culture

SUBS ART PRODUCTION Moviestills

CLIENT

The Dig Ever feel like you’re getting gazumped when your project turns out to be more important than people thought? Fed up of senior project managers steaming in with their size-12s, telling you how to do things? Your hero might just be Basil Brown, writes Richard Young

N

etflix’s The Dig has been one of the streaming hits of the pandemic. Our project hero is Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes), a farmer’s son and experienced excavator who’s hired in 1939 by landowner Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan – the project sponsor) to explore the Saxon archaeological site Sutton Hoo, which lies in her garden in Suffolk.

The project management lessons start from the outset. The first? Get to the point. Edith’s committed to the project but not terribly knowledgeable.

She knows what she wants – the mounds explored – but apart from that, she’s

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VERSION REPRO OP

Sometimes, listening to the instincts of others can be the right course of action, even when they don’t have your professional skills

SUBS ART PRODUCTION CLIENT

a little clueless. That’s a dream for a project manager: give me a goal, licence to operate, reasonable resources and we’ll get on just fine.

Basil is no-nonsense, too. At the meeting, he sets out his credentials – horny-handed son of the Suffolk soil who knows the land better than anyone – and probes Edith’s motivations to ensure there’s no misconceptions. A project manager should have confidence in their abilities – and if the sponsor trusts them, too, they’re less likely to butt in.

She does try. Reviewing the mounds, she nudges him towards the one she thinks shows promise. He explains exactly why he’s choosing the locations for his initial digs – and she lets him get on with it. She trusts him. (We’ll come back to this decision later…) There’s one other lesson from the early exchanges: don’t undersell yourself. Edith offers the same wage Ipswich Museum paid him for excavations. These academic archaeologists – representing a corporate bureaucracy – undervalue the self-taught Basil, so he tells her he won’t work for less than £2 a week. Eventually, realising he’s crucial to the project, she agrees.

He also makes clear his requirements: manpower (a couple of assistants), logistics (bed and board on-site) and control.

Dig the whole day through Basil gets to work, but the bureaucrats aren’t far behind. They nag him about suspending Edith’s dig to work on a more promising project. Edith insists he should be free to choose what to work on. Naturally, he stays with her – why switch horses to the bossy corporate programme managers when this project is all his? It’s not long before he repays her trust.

A good project manager knows when to stick to their guns and when to adapt.

Basil realises one of the mounds – the one Edith wanted to excavate from the

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start – has an unusual shape. And he suddenly sees that earlier grave-robbers will likely have dug their shaft in the wrong place as a result, meaning the treasures inside could still be intact. It’s not exactly agile project management.

But it’s a great lesson: when you realise your stage gate is poorly defined or won’t take you where you need to go next, don’t soldier on bloody-mindedly.

Recalibrate and reset. Sometimes, listening to the instincts of others can be the right course of action, even when they don’t have your professional skills.

Mounds of evidence There’s some high drama when Basil is buried under soil from the first trench he digs in the new site. Actually, he’s pretty rigorous about project safety and is constantly warning people about getting too close to the diggings. Is it too cheap to say project managers should always take their own health and safety as seriously as they take others’?

Basil realises that early finds in the mound are consistent with a large ship burial.

That makes his project suddenly more interesting to the ‘suits’. Of course, he informs his sponsor first – he knows that relationship is key, and not just for the (totally fictional) romantic subplot.

Local archaeologist (let’s style him as a regional manager in our corporate parallel) James Reid Moir attempts to muscle in when news of the find spreads. But with the backing of Edith, Basil rebuffs his offer of ‘help’. And who can blame a project manager for wanting to keep control of their baby? Edith is great here. She faces intense pressure from someone in authority, but backs her chap all the way, even offering him resources of her own (her cousin Rory – who becomes the centre of another fictional romantic subplot…) to help with the uptick in project work.

Another lesson, then: don’t automatically hand over a project that has taken on new significance – see what you can do with the resources at hand

A romantic subplot between the winsome Mulligan and craggy Fiennes complicates this project. Inset: projects need doers like Peggy Piggott

and the support of a sponsor. Go as far as you can with your own skills and personnel.

Buried under work Sadly, there really are some projects that turn out to be much bigger than their initial project manager’s skills and resources. And most will know the inevitable feeling that a successful, transformative project will attract the attention of glory-hunting executives. In Basil and Edith’s case, it’s a chap called Charles Phillips, a Cambridge academic who’s well connected to the British Museum.

He sniffs the value of the ship burial and uses regulations on ‘finds of national significance’ to take control.

At this point, there’s nothing that even project sponsor Edith can do. It’s her land – but once we’re into rules and regs, it’s a damage limitation job. Edith’s sickness is getting worse; Basil resents being bossed around and mistrusted (despite her ongoing support); and Phillips has brought in a whole team for the dig, meaning Basil can’t even do

the Dig, 2

OFFLINE

It’s not entirely clear whether he’s making a concession to her as sponsor or being more open-minded about Basil’s capabilities. But the decision pays off when it’s his expertise and instinct that give the project a new dimension as he uncovers evidence that this is an unprecedented find.

Lessons learned The project comes to fruition as Phillips and his team celebrate the find as one of historic significance. Edith still fights for her rights as sponsor – contesting ownership of the treasures at an inquest, for example. But eventually she agrees the British Museum is the best place for the discoveries, and as war looms, she concedes the project to Phillips –

Corporate takes full credit without the project manager getting a look in.

C’est la vie… the great project mentoring work with Edith’s young son Robert.

The question, then, is: how should a project manager handle their emotions when their hard work gets hijacked?

Basil reacts badly at first, leaving in a huff. But his much-neglected wife May convinces him that his duty is to his craft, the project… and to his sponsor Edith.

extracting a promise that Basil will get full recognition for his work as project manager when the finds are exhibited.

He doesn’t, of course – corporate takes full credit without the project manager getting a look in. C’est la vie…

But in a touching scene towards the end, we see the original project manager personally taking care to preserve the ship site before the dig is covered over for the duration. Basil is more than just project manager for Sutton Hoo. He speaks sincerely to Edith of being “part of something continuous, from the first hand-print on the wall of a cave.”

There’s a project management lesson there, too. If we’re serious about it as a profession, it’s not enough to develop skills and instincts like Basil – or even specialist disciplines within industries.

We need to remember what makes great project management from generations before – applying lessons learned from the whole profession, not just our own experiences.

DIGGING INTO LEADERSHIP TYPES Four years ago, Carsten Lund Pedersen and Thomas Ritter described four types of project leader in the Harvard Business Review. How do the characters in The Dig map onto them?

Moviestills

The project comes first There’s added spice when war breaks out. Everyone knows the dig will probably have to be suspended when hostilities occur, and that, in part, is what convinces Basil to return to the team. As May explains: “It means something – it’ll last longer than any damned war.” And truth be told, Phillips the interloper is a pretty damn good project manager himself. For example, knowing his own personal limits, he brings in a team with diverse skills, well suited to the project. And when Edith confronts him about his snobbery in not letting Basil make a more intimate contribution to the dig, he sees sense and welcomes our hero as a more involved member of the team.

THE PROPHET Grand visions requiring a leap of faith IN THE DIG: Edith Pretty, project sponsor.

She has no idea what’s in the mounds, but feels it must be important.

Sometimes, a hunch or obsession is vital for a project.

THE GAMBLER Bets followed up by locking in rewards IN THE DIG: Basil Brown, project leader.

Educated guessing is like smart gambling – using your knowledge of the terrain to skew projects risks in your favour.

THE EXPERT Analytical progress driven by sound advice IN THE DIG: Charles Phillips, PMO leader.

Deep subjectmatter knowledge is often crucial to a project’s success – and even to realising when it’s on the right track.

THE EXECUTOR Locked-in gains consistent with strategic plan IN THE DIG: Peggy Piggott, project manager.

Projects can’t progress without the doers – people who bring skills and experience but ensure the work of visionaries gets done.

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Smart (and fun) summer books and podcasts to enjoy

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Make time to sit back and relax with Project’s recommendations to keep you entertained and enlightened Send your own recommendations to emma.devita@thinkpublishing.co.uk

APM’S FROM THE FRONTLINE APM’s new series, hosted by Project editor Emma De Vita, provides an up-close and personal account by professionals working on projects at the forefront of thinking and action, whether it’s helping in the fight against COVID-19 or pushing technology to its limits, like NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover project.

First up is Nick Elliott, who led the UK government’s Vaccine Taskforce.

He recounts what it’s like to work on such an urgent mission in the full glare of the public eye.

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Anthro-Vision: How anthropology can explain business and life Gillian Tett (Random House Business)

Navigating infighting within teams, calming clashes between stakeholders and massaging egos are part and parcel of managing a project. But instead of turning to management gurus for advice on how to deal with the human side of work, what if we took our lead from cultural anthropology? In her new book, FT editor-at-large Gillian Tett argues that, when it comes to people management, we should borrow tactics from anthropologists, who these days are just as likely to look at an Amazon warehouse as the Amazon jungle. If projects are about people, anthropologists’ insights are valuable.

Connect: Resolve conflict, improve communication, strengthen relationships Guy Lubitsh and Tami Lubitsh-White (FT Publishing/Pearson)

Effective communication is an important project success factor, but it’s also one of the hardest things to

JANE GARVEY & FI GLOVER’S FORTUNATELY… WITH FI AND JANE

A collection of random and unrelated ramblings that are irresistibly smile-inducing. The two Radio 4 veteran broadcasters use their podcast to go behind the scenes with other radio stalwarts and media types, while chatting about everyday annoyances like printers – but in a funny way. Their topics range from the big to the small, all of which are tackled with that self-deprecating humour that can’t help but cheer you up. Guests include Fearne Cotton, Tom Allen, Fiona Bruce and Richard Osman.

get right. In this book, siblings Guy and Tami show how the ability to connect with each other will help you take your communication skills to the next level. Connect will help you understand what connection is and what type of connector you are, and give you a simple model to connect better with others in an honest and meaningful way. If you’ve ever wanted to understand your strengths and weaknesses as a communicator, this book will help you get there. A book to keep to hand for when arguments erupt (at home or at work).

Anxiety at Work: 8 strategies to help teams build resilience, handle uncertainty, and get stuff done Adam Gostick (Harper Business)

Adam Gostick, author of The Carrot Principle, identifies two common forms of anxiety at work. The first, anxiety disorders, are not tied to specific events or concerns in the lives of sufferers.

The second type is transient anxiety caused by external factors, such as overload, fear or a prolonged crisis.

The bad news, according to Gostick, is that anxiety is leading people to make more mistakes, to reduced productivity,

MICHAEL MOSLEY’S JUST ONE THING

If time is tight, what’s the one thing that you should be doing to improve your health and wellbeing?

Doctor Michael Mosley introduces his new series, in which he reveals surprisingly simple tips that are scientifically proven to change your life, from taking a brisk early-morning walk or a one-minute cold shower to learning a new language or eating fermented foods. Each episode is just 15 minutes long, but crammed with advice on what you should be doing and how, as well as giving an outline of the scientific evidence that proves it’s a practice worth trying.

Books, 1

The Practice of Not Thinking: A guide to mindful living Ryunosuke Koike (Penguin)

Japanese Buddhist monk Koike has written this guide to overcoming overthinking. He argues that overthinking is a disease that affects our ability to function properly. He believes that all the failures we experience may be attributed to excessive thinking and negative thoughts, and that the only way to gain control of our thinking is to practise stopping it. Koike shows us how we can use Buddhist principles in our daily lives to help us prevent our thoughts from getting tattered due to overuse, and to recharge our energy.

ideas around human error and bias to real-world organisations. The ‘noise’ in the title refers to ‘system noise’, the distractions that humans and organisations are susceptible to and lead to variability in judgements that should be identical. The book tackles the way noise in organisations can affect good judgement, and provides remedies for how it can be quietened.

Evolving Project Leadership: From command and control to engage and empower Gordon MacKay (APM)

This book first establishes a vision of what good project leadership looks like and then offers concrete steps to achieving it. Building on the inclusive leadership message summarised in the APM Body of Knowledge 7th edition, the book shows how outdated command-and-control behaviours are seldom effective in today’s delivery environment and can actually be counterproductive to project success. As an alternative, the book shows how the effective project leader evaluates the self, the team and the organisational culture to cultivate fit-for-purpose project leadership behaviours such as empowering team agility, synergy and collaboration. A must-read for aspiring leaders.

growing burnout and poor employee health. A first step in reducing tension at work comes in the form of honestly acknowledging the frantic paddling going on under the surface in a team.

The second step, mitigation, comes from leaders beginning to offer support for people to work through their feelings and build resilience for the challenges to come.

Noise: A flaw in human judgement

HBR’S IDEACAST

LAURIE SANTOS’ THE HAPPINESS LAB

MATTHEW SYED’S SIDEWAYS

Wide-ranging yet deep-thinking, this series of podcasts from Harvard Business Review gives you plenty of food for thought on work and careers from top-flight academics and corporate heavyweights. Listen to Bill Gates discuss how business leaders can fight climate change, or learn how to stop micromanaging, prevent burnout in your team or how to talk yourself up without turning people off. There is plenty to think about here – just don’t do too much of it (see The Practice of Not Thinking, above, or listen to episode 790, ‘Quit Overthinking Things’, natch.)

A professor of psychology who ran one of Yale’s most popular classes ever – ‘Psychology and the Good Life’ (its free 10-week online version on Coursera has had more than 3.3 million people sign up) – also offers up a podcast that delves into some of the fascinating topics she covered with her students. It’s time to scupper some of the myths about what leads to happiness that we have fallen for, whether it’s more money, a better job or a more svelte body. Instead, let’s focus on the surprising small practices that bring improvements in real wellbeing, like saying thank you.

Author of the best-selling Rebel Ideas, Matthew Syed explores the ideas that shape our lives. His gift is to make connections between big ideas and our daily lives by telling the stories of remarkable individuals and the different approaches they took to life. Learn how the career of Swedish pop music maestro Max Martin can teach us about collaboration, or why hierarchy might damage our happiness but is an inevitable part of any group organisation. The genius of the greatest organisations is to fuse the benefits of hierarchy with the bottom-up dynamism that underpins innovation, he finds.

Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass Sunstein (Harper Collins)

Nobel-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman and his co-authors seek to apply his revolutionary

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SCREEN-FREE DAYS ARE THE WAY FORWARD Eddie Obeng issues a warning that his ideas might terrify you and send you in search of a safe room!

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Yesterday I had an SFD. I write an acronym to make it less scary. Bold readers will find the definition in the box below. SFDs (or screen-free days) are what I have to do these days to shut out the incessant chatter. It seems to be the only way to do independent, probing, quality thinking.

Over the past fortnight I’ve accepted half a dozen interviews, from TED Red Circle to a young podcast entrepreneur. I have articles to write, courses to teach and clients to persuade to move from change to transformation.

All these share the same underlying questions. What next in this post-Covid world? If we can’t go back to ‘Before Covid’, where do we go? What shall we choose to do or not to do? I needed to think.

Follow Einstein’s advice

I reflect that the world probably has at least three to five years to go to be free of the primary (illness, lockdown), secondary (innovation in treatment and vaccines, digital tracking/impact on freedom) and tertiary (long-term PTSD, unemployment, business failures) effects of the spiky, little red monster.

As I brush my teeth, I ask myself, “How could the future look?” “Well,” I reply out loud, “it looks the way it has always looked. This could lead to paradise, dystopia or a dynamically stable in-between. What will happen is what is most probable. What it always takes is for us to consciously manipulate probability to make the future we want.

No change there!”

The day before, I’d overheard a news item about a prominent climate campaigner who was refusing to ‘attend’ a conference until the whole world had been jabbed. SFDs give you space to reconsider incongruous statements

that you normally gloss over and ignore.

Now, as I consider the inconsistent thinking and virtue signalling, I think, “Really?” Fifteen months of learning how to make digital conferences as emotionally engaging as face-to-face ones, then at the first opportunity, there is a push to go back to flying atoms about instead of letting the electrons do the walking? Won’t that just recreate the problems we had Before Covid?

Einstein did warn us not to use the mindset that created the problems to try to fix them. But what should you learn?

Professor Eddie Obeng is an educator, TED speaker and the author of Perfect Projects and All Change! The Project Leader’s Secret Handbook. Read his white paper at eddieobeng.com/howdigitalwillsave theworld. Tweet him @EddieObeng or read his blog at imagineafish.com

Don’t just take orders

In the afternoon, I share my views as I walk with my wife through a nearby larch wood. Over the years, I have met and spoken with thousands of project leaders, and if I had to choose a group of people I’d trust to step up to steer the world properly, it would be them.

I have a ‘reflection chair’ in our conservatory. It faces south-east and down the garden. I sit to write and capture the fruits of my SFD. I have enough ideas, examples and suggestions for my interviews, articles and teaching now. I write: “Project leaders will get it. They will step up, learn and lead properly. Because of you THE BEST IS YET TO COME!” I challenge you to try an SFD this weekend. (I’m planning an SFW shortly – join me.)

I realise that us project leaders need to lead the world to success. We deliver change or transformation. And that gives the competent ones among us a responsibility like never before. Our responsibility is to pay attention to the impact of projects we might lead. We

We competent project leaders manipulate the future because we deliver it must not just ‘take orders’. We must influence which orders are to be given and choose the best from among them.

We must check they are sound both in the short and long term. We must avoid projects that deliver irreversible damage. We must prioritise projects that enhance, empower, enable and excite individuals over those that replace or de-humanise them.

We must run perfect projects, avoiding waste and not disengaging stakeholders. We can choose properly because we have resilience, not recklessness or risk aversion. We competent project leaders manipulate the future because we deliver it. Outside of work, we should share our skills with

people who have a deep understanding of problems they are trying to tackle in the community.

Find your ‘reflection chair’

SFD = screen-free day: No phones, laptops, desktops, TV, tablets or touch-screen controls. No looking at anything that is a screen, even if it’s on your oven.

Withdrawal symptoms include: hearing birdsong and responding with genuine interest to your spouse or kid.

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