the smart pms blog http://thesmartpms.posterous.com Most recent posts at the smart pms blog posterous.com Sun, 20 May 2012 07:54:00 -0700 Managing Multicultural Teams http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/managing-multicultural-teams http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/managing-multicultural-teams


Having the opportunity to work for a company that operates in more than two hundred countries

Having the opportunity to work for a company that operates in more than two hundred countries and territories and is a global leader in logistics has given me the opportunity to lead large global and regional information-technology projects. While technology made the work complex, the element of culture, both national and organizational, amplified the complexity.

A Global Project

The objectives of my first assignment were to lead the convergence of existing invoicing applications hosted and managed by country IT teams to a centrally managed single platform hosted in one of the regional data centers, and to standardize operations and processes. The new invoicing platform would be used by all countries in the Americas region; changes would follow a formal change-request process.

Although the existing invoicing applications shared core functionality, IT departments in individual companies had customized them by adding nonstandard functions that often did not comply with regional guidelines. This uncontrolled behavior led to new functions and processes that disrupted the standard operations at country and regional levels.

The technical team supporting the countries was challenged by reported incidents that often related to the customized functions, not core functionality. This was a source of conflict between the country IT teams and the technical support team, which many times was unable to address the issue. Business users did not produce invoices on time and their level of satisfaction was low. All this affected country and regional cash flow.

The Americas management board sponsored the project and mandated that all countries stop using any feature or function not aligned with the regional invoicing standards.

The Project Team

The project team consisted of stakeholders, the deployment team, and a technical support team. Stakeholders were the permanent regional management board and rotating country officials, including general manager, finance officer, and IT officer, who joined when the new platform was deployed in their particular country. The core deployment team was the same from project inception through completion and consisted of a project manager, technical-support team lead, and subject-matter experts in technology and invoicing. The rotating team members included country resources, both technical and end users. The technical support team, remotely located in Asia, supported day-to-day operation during the Americas business hours.

During team formation, team management became complex as some stakeholders and members of the deployment team changed when a new deployment started. New members came on board and others departed as the deployment in their countries was completed. I had to understand how to integrate new members into the team smoothly, convincing them to accept change and promptly collaborate with the project.

I learned that I needed to develop cultural competencies to manage the project team effectively and establish connections with team members when they came on board. A kick-off meeting to explain the purpose and benefits of the project helped establish the bond between new team members and the project. The most important part of connecting was stressing the importance of their roles and how their local experience would enrich the project, as this created a sense of belonging that translated into engagement. But the connection was strengthened by understanding and respecting the different communication styles and preferences of the national cultures involved.

There are many books about national cultures, but few resources explain how to deal with national cultures in project teams. While attending project management congresses, I was able to connect with other project management professionals who had faced similar challenges and learn from their experiences. I also learned from my own mistakes. During my first visit to Asia, I met with the technical-support team lead and his team and inadvertently broke the local meeting protocol when I started asking direct questions of team members. After catching the nonverbal cues of team members that showed they were asking the team lead for permission to answer, I switched to directing questions to the lead. He then selected the person to answer the question. At the end of the meeting, I apologized to the team lead and team members for my oversight and made it clear that my intention was not to make them uncomfortable or violate local meeting standards. I quickly shared what I learned with the rest of the deployment team.

Speaking foreign languages is a must in a global project environment, but language skill alone does not make a cross-cultural expert. It is necessary to understand other cultures’ values, beliefs, and communication preferences. Knowing how they manage and resolve conflict is essential, for obvious reasons.

During my first visit to Asia, I met with the technical-support team lead and his team and inadvertently broke the local meeting protocol when I started asking direct questions of team members.

It is also important to understand your own culture’s norms and behaviors. That knowledge helps guard against interpreting other cultures’ behaviors in terms of your own unexamined expectations. Reflecting on your own culture helps you understand and interpret why people from other cultures act the way they do.

With those recommendations in mind, I looked for ways to improve my cultural awareness in order to better understand my team members. As the project progressed and my cultural awareness improved, my connection with international team members became closer and more robust. When I had to spend more than two weeks in a country, I usually spent my weekends visiting popular spots where locals met: restaurants, farmers’ markets, coffee shops, and occasional sporting events where I observed people’s customs, traditions, and behaviors. My observations in those settings helped answer my questions about culture. When in doubt, I asked questions either of the locals or my colleagues.

Intracompany Networking

I often met with country management boards during the course of the project; these meetings offered good opportunities to establish long-lasting business relationships. I learned the importance of doing “my homework,” gathering all the relevant information prior to any meeting and knowing the audience in advance. Having established strong relationships in the initial phase of the project helped me get insight into country officials from people who had already dealt with them. Knowing the preferences and sometimes the opinions of a country’s management board about the project helped me to build the right deployment strategy and know what to expect from meetings.

In every meeting with country management boards, my team and I wore business attire and arrived on time. Board members arrived gradually and the general manager usually arrived late, demonstrating his status. The meeting started with preliminary discussions that helped build rapport. Deployment discussions occurred only after rapport was established. Usually, the first meeting exceeded the original allotted time and a second meeting was required to make the final decisions.

In this kind of project, it is important to have a well-defined circle of people who can influence the outcome. It can be like having “invisible” team members who support important functions and contribute to project performance.

Relationships should span all levels of the organization and not be limited to the higher ranks. Establishing a good relationship with users gives you feedback regarding the operation of the application and how it can be enhanced. For instance, Costa Rican users helped solve a common problem: end-of-day activities that involved several steps that required constant attention and, often, work after regular business hours. They suggested assessing the feasibility of automating these tasks. The assessment was positive and the tasks were automated, enabling Costa Rica and the other countries to avoid overtime payment.

A New Project Manager’s Role

In an environment where organizations depend on global projects for benefits that contribute to strategic objectives, the project management professional needs to explore new ways to lead, execute, and deliver projects supported by dispersed and diverse teams. Technical expertise is not enough. Project managers must adopt a business-oriented approach and cultural awareness and other soft skills. The most important knowledge and skills include the following:

  • Strategic Management. Understanding an organization’s strategy will provide the backdrop for future assignments and an understanding of project selection criteria. Only projects that help the organization fulfill its intended purpose should be selected.
  • Mindful Communication. Communication is crucial to project success. Communication needs to be customized to the specific cultures involved in a diverse project team. Good communication influences and inspires project teams and helps build strong relationships across the organization.
  • Adaptability. New leadership styles that fit the global project are required when working with diverse and dispersed teams located across time zones.
  • Resilience. Realigning or repairing projects facing unexpected hardship because of miscommunication and problematic behaviors as well as cross-cultural issues and conflicts will be a regular part of the project manager’s task.
  • Transparency. Adherence to an organization’s values and culture as well as professional codes of ethics is mandatory in global projects. The state of the global project needs to be shared promptly with relevant parties whether the project is in good shape or facing hardships.

In this new role, the project manager will turn into a perennial learner striving toward excellence, a great communicator, and a business partner who ensures that projects will produce the benefits the organization is seeking.

Key Questions

  • As a global project manager, how do you deal with cultural issues in your project team?
  • What is your strategy to deal with conflict in a cross-cultural team?
  • Do you enjoy the challenge of being a global project manager?

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Tue, 21 Jun 2011 18:45:00 -0700 Using Strategic Project Management As a Tool to Achieve Competitive Advantage http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/using-strategic-project-management-as-a-tool http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/using-strategic-project-management-as-a-tool

Conrado Morlan, EzineArticles.com Basic Author

Current business trends are forcing companies to find the right project mix in order to become more efficient and agile; efficiency and agility are two key elements to achieving competitive advantage, and will result in increasing market share or revenue.

For years, companies around the world have looked for ways to achieve competitive advantage through a traditional project management approach, which is operational in nature and includes strict functional and operational controls focused on schedules, budgets and resources. The results of these projects have not produced the expected benefits and organizations have not achieved competitive advantage even when projects met the strict functional and operational controls.

On the other hand, some innovative companies seeking to dominate their business sectors are practicing and opting for an evolutionary process that will take them from an operational approach to a strategic approach. Under this new direction, projects will be used as the means to achieve real business objectives that will support the business strategy.

Research studies have confirmed that projects aligned with business strategy are the foundation of competitive advantage and realize business objectives faster. The results suggest that companies choosing to adopt this new approach will require commitment across all levels of the organization to change the project management paradigm and establish the new way in which projects being undertaken will be aligned to business strategy to attain business goals.

Under the new way, projects must be dynamic, flexible and capable in order to adapt to potential strategy changes or to respond to external factors. The new project environment, although dynamic, must not lose sight of the fact that business goals should be met as established at project inception. This new approach should not change the project's attribute of temporality.

Companies adopting the strategic approach to project management will experience a change in their project selection process and will establish new metrics. One example is the creation of a"compete meter" which will contain the new project selection criteria. An example of the compete meter project classification may include:

• "Follow the race": Projects aimed at improve operations and achieve results in the short term.These projects usually allow the organization to maintain its market position

• "Winning the race"Projects designed to improve efficiency or effectiveness with the main objective of increasing market share

• "Changing the rules of the game": Projects designed to create new market conditions that will distinguish the organization from the competition and strive towards the desired competitive advantage

This project classification establishes that a project's outcome is not a product or service but rather a means of how to approach the competition and win.

Under the strategic approach, a project manager's role will expand and in addition to fulfilling his/her traditional functions, he/she will need to step into strategic and leadership roles.The project manager will turn into a strategic professional who will lead project and cross-functional teams and participate in board meetings where decisions are made about starting, continuing or cancelling projects based on business results.

Once the organization achieves a high level of maturity in the strategic approach to project management, projects will be identified during the organization's planning and strategic sessions and will count on the board members' acceptance and their commitment to assist the project team as necessary.

Having worked with companies transitioning from the traditional operational project management approach to the strategic approach, I had the opportunity to see how the general manager cascaded the new project management approach across the organization. Solid results were achieved during the first eighteen months since all functional areas collaborated towards specific business goals.

Organizations desiring to gain a competitive advantage should adopt the strategic approach to project management and align their projects with organizational strategy to define what to do, how to do it and how to achieve business objectives.

 

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Wed, 01 Jun 2011 18:46:00 -0700 Cultural Competence http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/55230941 http://thesmartpms.posterous.com/55230941

The magazine  "Strategic Diversity & Inclusion Management" published the article co-authored by Mercedes Martin & Billy Vaughn in 2007 where cultural competence was discussed.

"Cultural competence refers to an ability to interact effectively with people of different cultures. Cultural competence comprises four components: (a) Awareness of one's own cultural worldview, (b) Attitude towards cultural differences, (c) Knowledge of different cultural practices and worldviews, and (d) cross-cultural skills. Developing cultural competence results in an ability to understand, communicate with, and effectively interact with people across cultures."

As projects reach globalization, culture plays a critical role during the project execution. In our role as project managers, the cultural risk needs to be identified as well as its associated mitigation plan. Developing cross cultural competences in today's world is a must and should include the understanding and adapting to different, communication properly across cultures and avoiding stereotypes. 

Project managers should prepare in advance and know the cultural environment that they will be facing to avoid odd situations.

In recent weeks. President Barack Obama suffered an awkward moment during a banquet at Buckingham Palace when he broke royal protocol by speaking over the national anthem. President Obama has been criticized by many TV talk shows and news anchors across the United States and perhaps around the world.

This is a good lesson for those project managers leading global teams who still doubt the usefulness of the cultural competence.

 

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