If you do not change some rooted human behavior on projects, you cannot improve anything because humans lie at the heart of any organization and its systems.
—Gerald I. Kendall, PMP and Steven C. Rollins, PMP in Advanced Project Portfolio Management and the PMO
The Right Stuff: Competency-Based Employment 77
The nature of work today is that individuals are often expected to take responsibility for their own professional growth. However, no one exists or works in an independent vacuum. There are clear and very necessary roles for organizations to play in creating an environment that fosters suc- cessful project managers. And, it is in the organization’s interest to do so.
This collective information from assessments should be used to struc- ture both a developmental program and an organizational project man- agement career path. A developmental program is ideally a coordinated track that combines educational, training, and professional experiences for each role in the project management area.
The developmental program should be aligned with a career path that clearly demonstrates how an individual can progress from a team leader to a project executive within the organization. It can also be used to assist in recruiting candidates to the organization. (For more on career paths, see Chapter 6.)
The ultimate goal in using this approach is the creation of sustainable performance in managing projects. This can be accomplished by creating a well-trained, effectively positioned workforce that is capable of maxi- mizing their potential in the various roles required in project management.
The real value of these assessments is learned by aggregating the results of all three assessment areas (knowledge, behavior, and potential) and using the output reports to develop a comprehensive view of their project manager population. A possible output could be that the candidate has adequate knowledge, poor execution behaviors, and solid potential.
Using the combined information, the organization can determine where the gap really exists. It may be a matter of education, adding a mentoring relationship, or providing more directed experiences to improve perfor- mance. Another possible scenario is that the candidate has high knowl- edge, poor performance, and low potential. Analysis of this situation may determine that the candidate may be best suited to a specific role in the technical area rather than as a project manager. Using these assessments together allows organizations to more effectively develop and deliver targeted professional development interventions for their project manage- ment population.
Of course, competency-based management still comes down to some- one making decisions about who gets what pay, and for what reasons.
Best practices include group reviews where managers review competency assessment decisions and then obtain approval of the manager’s recom- mendations by the level above. The method for determining those differ- ences is most often where the individual employee falls on a scale relative to the competency model.26 If competencies are the “wheels” for managing knowledge work, pay remains the engine. In most organizations it is not enough just to reveal the most critical competencies or to provide training
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and development in competencies. Employees will continue to pay atten- tion to whatever gets reinforced by pay even if it merely reflects the individual biases of their managers. Company after company has come to the same conclusion about managing with competencies: nobody really cares until they are linked to pay. In the past, some project-oriented companies have linked rewards to Project Management Professional (PMP®) certification, yet it is possible for a PMP to acquire the technical knowledge needed for project management but still lack many of the business and interpersonal skills needed to lead projects successfully.27 (More discussion of rewards is found in Chapter 7.)
Competence-Building Activities
One way to approximate the real-world application of professional skills is to create cases that highlight complex situations that demand skillful performance. Reading and studying such cases, the learner sees how to exercise judgment in applying any particular guideline. As an organiza- tional learning activity, project personnel can practice their problem- solving skills, either online or at lunch-hour learning sessions, by reviewing cases based on an actual organizational story or event. Executives respon- sible for developing project managers can create a hierarchy of cases, where the simplest cases focus on one polarity and the more difficult focus on the simultaneous interplay of several polarities.
Competence building takes on the flavor of mentoring and coaching if project managers’ supervisors or trainers can identify, through peer nomination, managers who are regarded as the “best.” Just as artificial- intelligence researchers interview seasoned professionals to create an expert system, the best project managers can be interviewed to elicit how they have solved difficult problems in the past. A task force of project managers, for example, can ask the “best” to respond, by talking out loud in response to a particular case study. Alternatively, the best project managers can be asked to recount stories of when they confronted and solved especially challenging problems.28,29
The best project managers, if they are willing to do so, can mentor and coach individuals whose assessment has shown they are in need of improvement in specific skills. Having the results of the assessment to start from focuses mentoring activities and makes them more productive.
Assessing and improving individual competence in the ways described in this chapter is an important step in improving organizational project management capability. But just as individuals do not work in a vacuum, organizations are not blank slates. Let us consider the organizational culture dimension of competence, which, as seen in Table 3.1, impacts individual behavior and performance.
The Right Stuff: Competency-Based Employment 79
Applying Systems Thinking to Competence
It is worth noting that competency-model experts Lucia and Lelpsinger30 start their book on the topic by listing three things that support organi- zational success:
1. Competent leadership 2. Competent employees
3. A corporate culture that fosters and optimizes competence Often in our discussion of competence, we focus narrowly on the personal traits and abilities of individuals. But this is only one level of the three that must be analyzed when seeking, as Christopher Sauer said at the beginning of this chapter, to build organizational project manage- ment capability: How capable are individuals? How well do the teams they work in function? And how supportive is the organization? Capable individuals still cannot work miracles within dysfunctional teams and organizations. That is why culture change, not merely individual compe- tence assessments, are required.
“Organizational pathology,” says David Frame, is behavior rooted in an organizational culture that works against the best interest of the organization and its members. Organizations that punish the bearers of bad news are an example. Organizations that insist on applying outworn solutions to new problems similarly stifle personal competence in their members. The result? A “a profoundly unhappy workforce.”31
To develop the organization’s project management capability, says Sauer, it is desirable both to institutionalize the development of individual capabilities and to create learning, which extends beyond the individual project manager’s skills and experience. He recommends the project office, as “a focal point in the organization” where an environment conducive to the development and practice of project management capabilities can flourish.32 Yet even the best-run project office cannot sustain brilliant project managers unless it is nested within a corporate culture whose values are the values of project management: teamwork, flexibility, merit- based rewards, and realistic planning.
Kerzner has identified actions that the organization can take to set the tone for the support of projects and project teams as well as the overall project management system. The project-centered organization:
Shows a willingness to coordinate efforts
Demonstrates a willingness to maintain structural flexibility Shows a willingness to adapt to change
Performs effective strategic planning
80 Optimizing Human Capital
Communicates promptly and accurately Exhibits enthusiasm
Recognizes that projects contribute to the capabilities of the whole company
When a project is being performed for a client organization, the client can exert a great deal of influence on the behavioral aspects of a project by minimizing team meetings, rapidly responding to requests for infor- mation, and simply allowing the contractor to conduct business without interference. The positive actions of client organizations include:
Showing a willingness to coordinate efforts Maintaining rapport
Establishing reasonable and specific goals and criteria for success Establishing procedures for making changes
Communicating promptly and accurately Committing client resources as needed Minimizing red tape
Providing sufficient authority to the client’s representative, espe- cially in decision making
Kerzner adds that when executive sponsors take the following actions, project success is more likely:
Selecting a project manager at an early point in the project who has a proven track record in behavioral skills and technical skills Developing clear and workable guidelines for the project manager Delegating sufficient authority to the project manager so that he or she can make decisions in conjunction with the project team members
Demonstrating enthusiasm for and a commitment to the project and the project team
Developing and maintaining short and informal lines of commu- nication
Avoiding excessive pressure on the project manager to win con- tracts
Avoiding arbitrarily slashing or ballooning the project team’s cost estimates
Developing close, not meddlesome, working relationships with the project manager and other key stakeholders
“Behavioral success” — as indicated by such project environmental attributes as openness and honesty among the stakeholders, an atmosphere
The Right Stuff: Competency-Based Employment 81
that encourages healthy, but not cutthroat, competition, adequate funding, informal lines of communication and a flat organizational structure, prompt decisions and close working relationships — is how Kerzner describes the outcome when organizations are competent at supporting competence.33
Assuming that an organizational context exists in which project man- agers and teams can “be all that they can be,” let us now turn our attention to the tasks and responsibilities faced by key project personnel.
Notes
1. Frank Toney, The Superior Project Manager, Center for Business Practices, 2002.
2. Christopher Sauer, Li Liu, and Kim Johnston, Where project managers are kings, Project Management Journal, December 2001.
3. Antoinette D. Lucia and Richard Lelpsinger, The Art and Science of Com- petency Models, Jossey-Bass, 1999.
4. Joan Knutson, Project manager competencies, People on Projects, May 2003.
5. Rob Yeung and Simon Brittain, Beyond the interview, Financial Times (London), Nov. 12, 2001.
6. Howard Risher, Aligning Pay and Results, Amacom, 1999.
7. See the discussion of project management job families in Chapter 4.
8. Antoinette D. Lucia and Richard Lelpsinger, The Art and Science of Com- petency Models, Jossey-Bass, 1999.
9. Antoinette D. Lucia and Richard Lelpsinger, The Art and Science of Com- petency Models, Jossey-Bass, 1999.
10. Louis Carter et al., Best Practices in Organization Development and Change, Jossey-Bass, 2001.
11. Howard Risher, Aligning Pay and Results, Amacom, 1999.
12. C.J. Russell, A longitudinal study of top-level executive per formance, Journal of Applied Psychology, 2001, 6, 510–517.
13. James Warner, interview in Workforce Week, March 2002.
14. Performance-based Selection, www.hrstrategy.com.
15. Rob Yeung and Simon Brittain, Beyond the interview, Financial Times (London), Nov. 12, 2001.
16. Project Manager Competency Development Framework, PMI, 2002.
17. Michael Zwell, Creating a Culture of Competence, Wiley, 2000.
18. Jeffrey M. Anderson, Ph.D., interview in Workforce Week, May 6, 2003.
19. Charles Handler and Steven Hunt, Using Assessment Tools for Better Hiring, Workforce Magazine, July 2003.
20. BUCEC Introduces Project Management Competency Model, Business Wire, Jan. 8, 2003; Freeman and Gould, The Art of Project Management: A Competency Model for Project Managers, White paper, accessed at www.
BUTrain.com.
21. PM College can be accessed at www.pmcollege.com; Caliper at www.
caliperonline.com.
82 Optimizing Human Capital
22. The adoption of any new knowledge areas will be reflected in updates to the testing instruments.
23. Personal interview, Dr. Jimmie West, February 2003.
24. Jimmie West and Deborah Bigelow, Competency assessment programs, Chief Learning Officer, May 2003.
25. Building Project Manager Competency, White paper, PM College, June 2004. Accessible at http://www.pmsolutions.com/articles/pm_skills.htm.
26. Howard Risher, Aligning Pay and Results, Amacom, 1999.
27. Freeman and Gould, ibid.
28. Larry Hirschhorn, Manage polarities before they manage you, Research Technology Management, Sept./Oct. 2001.
29. Barry Johnson, Polarity Management: Identifying and Managing Unsolv- able Problems, HRD Press, Inc., 1992.
30. Antoinette D. Lucia and Richard Lelpsinger, The Art and Science of Com- petency Models, Jossey-Bass, 1999.
31. J. Davidson Frame, Building Project Management Competence, Jossey-Bass, 1999.
32. L.P. Willcocks, D.E. Feeny, and G. Islei (Eds.), Managing IT as A Strategic Resource, McGraw-Hill, 1999; and Christopher Sauer et al., ibid.
33. Harold Kerzner, In Search of Excellence in Project Management, John Wiley
& Sons, 1998.
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