SUMMARY and CONCLUSION

9 HABITS SUMMARIZED

Each habit as a standalone is very simple and practical and can easily be adopted individually. None of the habits are a prerequisite to any previous one. One can deploy each habit based on the execution needs of the project. However, the authors posit that together, all nine habits offer a guaranteed positive outcome. Habits are developed through experience and are shaped by many internal (e.g., company size, organizational project management maturity level) and external (e.g., regulatory, customer, type of industry) standards, size of project, duration of project, and scope of project. Even though they are applicable to any project anywhere, these habits are particularly valuable for managing large (US$50 million+) and long duration (1+ year) projects. A summary of the nine habits along with their business drivers is illustrated in Figure 4.

The concept of win-win-win for project leaders coined here is what companies should adopt for their project leaders. Lose-win-win results in dissatisfaction within an organization's own resources. Win-lose-win results in adverse impact to strategic business goals and profits. Win-win-lose results in unhappy customers and no repeat business.

Even a small project usually involves change…many, many changes, actually. Don't make the mistake of believing that all team members understand the change. Communicate the change clearly and in a timely manner, even risking “over-communication” (i.e., multiple and redundant channels like voicemail, training sessions, emails, newsletters, and town-hall meetings). Once I asked my project director if there was such a thing as “over-communication.” She stated that if there is, then “let's do it.” A project leader will seek a balance between effective information flow and information overload.

Essentially, project leaders are in the “relationship business.” These nine habits help build the foundation for win-win-win relationships. The basic message when you brew all the proposed habits together is:

Communicate, Communicate, Communicate with all stakeholders and Engage, Engage, Engage at all levels

In presenting several seminars on this topic over the last three years, we asked audiences of mostly project managers how many habits they typically deploy on their projects. We observed the following average response (Figure 5):

CULTURE MATTERS

Having worked on many international projects overseas, I experienced the flavor of many different cultures. Today, there is an increasing number of international projects with global organizations. From national culture comes organizational culture, and from organizational culture comes project culture. These global organizations have multicultural project teams. Generally, these multicultural teams provide innovative thinking and can be both an asset and a challenge. Project leaders are more sensitive to and more aware of culture. These habits may need to be slightly adjusted to suit a multicultural environment. The real challenge comes from global projects where multicultural teams are working 24/7 to execute projects. A project leader managing multicultural teams needs to be culturally sensitive to promote creativity and innovation. By adopting these nine habits, the possibility of any cultural dissonance can be avoided if the project leader clarifies the purpose and maintains flexibility in following them.

In my experience of working in almost all continents, I have come across differences in relations between people, in motivational orientation, in attitude toward time, in degree of control, in degree of honesty in reporting progress, and in professional values and integrity. While working on Western and non-Western projects, I have personally experienced the following types of cultural challenges:

• a culture that discourages conflict and any adverse issue being escalated to higher levels

• a culture that punishes or covers up failure

• a culture that promotes hiding of information, particularly bad information

• a culture that operates purely on the established hierarchy

• a culture that strictly follows the policies and procedures

• a culture that prevents out-of-the-box thinking

• a culture that doesn't respect diversity

• a culture that thinks “celebration” is a waste of time and project funds

• a culture that does not believe in planning

• a culture that will not share authority or decision making

• a culture in which you cannot assign tasks to senior managers

• a culture where rules can vary

• a culture with sharply defined roles for women versus men

• a culture where risk tolerance is very low

• a culture where whoever has power won't mingle with groups of people who are working class

• a culture where attitude toward time is completely different (i.e., long term versus short term)

• a culture where one-at-a-time tasks are preferred over multitasking

• a culture where punctuality is not respected

• a culture where deadlines mean very little and has a habit of always stretching deadlines

• a culture where there is more respect for elders (age) than competence

• a culture where harmony is more important than winning

• a culture where saving face is more important than pride

• a culture where the team is driven by compliance and not creativity.

We mention the above cultural thinking because some of the proposed habits may have to be tweaked to take cultural differences into account.

CLASSIC REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE

In October 2013, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) rolled out HealthCare.gov, a health insurance exchange website under the provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), also popularly known as “Obamacare.” We all know that the launch of the healthcare e-commerce website project was an utter disappointment for all stakeholders. The project team never understood the larger context of complex interfaces to many other government systems.

The following excerpt from the executive summary of the Office of Inspector General's case study completed in 2016 on “HealthCare.gov” shows what happens when a huge public IT project worth hundreds of millions of dollars did not utilize any of the key habits outlined in this book:

The development of HealthCare.gov faced a high risk of failure, given the technical complexity required, the fixed deadline, and a high degree of uncertainty about mission, scope, and funding. Still, we found that HHS and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) made many missteps throughout development and implementation that led to the poor launch. Most critical was the absence of clear leadership, which caused delays in decision making, lack of clarity in project tasks, and the inability of CMS to recognize the magnitude of problems as the project deteriorated. Additional HHS and CMS missteps included devoting too much time to developing policy, which left too little time for developing the website, making poor technical decisions, and failing to properly manage its key website development contract. CMS's organizational structure and culture also hampered progress, including poor coordination between policy and technical work, resistance to communicating and heeding warnings of “bad news,” and reluctance to alter plans in the face of problems. CMS continued on a failing path to developing HealthCare.gov despite signs of trouble, making rushed corrections shortly before the launch that proved insufficient. These structural, cultural, and tactical deficiencies were particularly problematic for HealthCare.gov given the significant challenges of implementing a new program involving multiple stakeholders and a large technology build.

Some of the lessons learned identified in the Inspector General's report were:

• On Leadership – Assign clear project leadership to provide cohesion across tasks and a comprehensive view of progress (correlates with lack of Habits 1, 3, and 4).

• On Communication – Promote acceptance of bad news and encourage staff to identify and communicate problems (correlates with lack of Habits 5, 6, and 7).

• On Alignment – Align project and organizational strategies with the resources and expertise available (correlates with lack of Habits 2 and 6).

• On Culture – Identify and address factors of organizational culture that may affect project success (correlates with lack of Habits 8 and 9).

• On Planning – Develop contingency plans that are quickly actionable, such as redundant and scalable systems (correlates with lack of Habits 4 and 5).

The above findings and lessons learned are typical of many public and private projects that are run by project managers and not project leaders. There are scores of examples around the world every year where mission-critical projects fail due to lack of clear ownership, resistance to bad news, disjointed organization of documents, weak sharing of pertinent reports, and poor adaptability to change. The healthcare initiative in 2013 was a mission-critical project with the largest possible group of stakeholders. We have already explained the difference between a project manager and a project leader in the beginning of this book. A mind-set of win-win-win is critical for any project to be truly successful. The nine habits, when adopted and practiced correctly, will facilitate the development of a win-win-win mind-set.