Connecting Customers, Stakeholders, Networks, and Connections (Identifying the Invisible)

In the story above, the PMO's eureka moment was the realization that without deep connections across the organization, all its passion and expertise wouldn't—couldn't—have deep and lasting impact. Put another way, it's not what you know, but who you know. And who you connect with.

Can you think of people who can get things done or have been promoted because they have connections, and not necessarily for their qualifications? A team at the Norwegian School of Business and Economics researched a similar question a few years ago. They investigated how human capital (knowledge) and social capital (relationships) contribute to individual productivity in project environments. Both are important, the researchers found; however, the social capital or who you know has a noticeably greater impact on productivity in projects.

The importance of stakeholder management in project management is well understood, and classic stakeholder management techniques like stakeholder identification, prioritization, and management based on power, interest, influence, and other factors are common. But this is not enough; the next generation of project management must go beyond and focus on networks and connections of stakeholders as well. It is harder to do an effective stakeholder analysis as the number of stakeholders grows exponentially with the increase in number of teams, vendors, partners, customers involved in today's projects. Another challenge is it is even harder to identify the stakeholders that matter. Typically, you start with hierarchical org charts, but as we all know, the real work happens in informal networks with the key connectors, who may not necessarily have the right position or title, like Gina, in Figure 7.2, but she wields a lot of clout.

So, how do we identify the Ginas of the world?

Social scientists have used the concept of “social networks” since early in the twentieth century to connote complex sets of relationships between members of social systems. Social network analysis is the mapping and measuring of relationships and flows between people, groups, organizations, computers, or other information/knowledge processing entities, according to Valdis Krebs, a researcher, and consultant in the field of social and organizational network analysis.

As Friedrich Nietzsche beautifully put it, “Invisible threads are the strongest ties.” The challenge is how to identify the invisible connections. In our practice, we have adapted social network analysis to analyze stakeholder networks, a technique that helps project managers or PMO leaders understand the complexity of their networks and the connection points that most matter. It allows us to decipher the intricate maze of relationships and their impact on complex projects. It's a variation of social network analysis, which analyzes the connections of nodes and ties in a social network. Detailed network analysis involves a combination of measures like:

• Degrees—the number of direct connections.
• Betweenness—how much a node controls what flows in the network.
• Closeness—how quickly a node can access all other nodes via a minimum of hops.
• Other factors—like diameter, density, and subgroups.

Figure 7.3 illustrates an example of a project stakeholder network. We can assume that Brian is the project manager and Debbie, Christine, Rich, Ahmed, Kumar, and Chen are core team members. Tom has some supervisory capacity over this team; Pat is the sponsor and Beth the client.

These types of visualizations are like mirrors that help you spot who are the most connected and powerful stakeholders in this network? Can you see who the key people are in this example? Can you identify any structural gaps that need to be bridged? Upon preliminary review, it may appear that Brian is the most connected and powerful person in the network. However, further analysis reveals that Tom is the key node in this network because he is the gatekeeper between the project team and the sponsor and client side of the network. Next, Debbie and Christine are vital nodes between the right and the left side of the network. Even though Brian appears to be well connected and busy with his team, he needs to bridge the gap between himself and Pat and Beth, instead of relying on Debbie and Christine or Tom. If he does not have a good relationship with either of them or if either of them decides to withhold information, Brian can be negatively impacted.

Start by simply illustrating the network of stakeholders in your project or PMO environment and identify the key nodes and any gaps between stakeholders that might need to be bridged. You'll likely be surprised by what you find—new ways of viewing your stakeholder landscape, and the relationships that collectively contribute to (or limit) its impact. Review Figure 7.4, adapted from Mariu Moresco and Carlo Notari, to get deeper insights into the attributes of elements in informal networks. Particularly interesting are the features of the network actors. For example, you can see how Gina in the above example might be the central hub or opinion leader. In large projects or organizations, it is critical to identify the Ginas of the world who are the connectors, and the important nodes that can either spread or block the message. You might not have the bandwidth to touch or influence everybody—that's why you have to identify the powerful, influential nodes and strengthen your connection with them. This analysis also helps you to identify the gatekeepers, power brokers, boundary spanners, pulse takers, and positive deviants, so that you can leverage the right type connectors.

Stakeholder network analysis is a powerful technique. You can leverage it in powerful ways depending on what you know about who you know. We can all relate to this living in a hyperconnected world of social media with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms that are based on the same idea of the power of connections. While LinkedIn and Facebook use powerful tools and algorithms for network analysis, there is a whole slew of tools like Inflow (which was used to create the above example) and many others. Just Google “social network analysis and visualization tools” and you will see the latest links, like Commetrix, Cuttlefish, Cytoscope, Egonet, Gephi, Netyltic, Netminer, and others.

To start with, you don't have to use sophisticated network analysis tools, you can simply be more observant and use a stakeholder leverage matrix as shown in Figure 7.5. This matrix can be used to map the existence of a relationship among a group of people with a checkmark or X. You can add another dimension by using a scale from 1 to 5 to assess the degree or depth of connection.

If we can understand what is driving behavior, and why adversarial relationships develop in the first place, we're more likely to be able to shape behavior and deepen connections. That's why from a next‐generation PMO standpoint, stakeholder mapping, and stakeholder network analysis aren't enough. We need to go deeper and dive into behavior and what's behind it. New psycho‐linguistic tools are now emerging that allow one to do just that. These tools are designed to mine e‐mail and various social interaction communications based on algorithms to better understand relationships and highlight behaviors like bullying, passive aggressiveness, and emotional heat maps in project teams.

It's easy to see the value in understanding certain stakeholders with such depth. Ultimately, though, it's not about what you know about who you know, but what you do with the what and the who, that is going to matter.

Connecting Silos: Bridging the Matrix

“One hand doesn't talk to the other.” “The silo mentality.” Sound familiar? If you work in a large matrixed organization, you are dealing with it daily. Organizations are traditionally hierarchical and siloed, with top‐down, division of labor, fragmented processes and culture. Many PMOs, of course, are created to standardize processes across the organization. But the fragmentation is much broader and deeper than just processes. In my experience, it often spans strategy, core assumptions about the organization's purpose and awareness of what other departments and business units are accomplishing—or trying to.

How did things get so complicated? The matrixed structure of most large organizations is a good place to start. It helped to crack the mirror. Companies should know better in this day and age, but there seems to be no stopping the trend.

As Ron Ashkenas, author of The Boundaryless Organization, once noted in the Harvard Business Review, although the speed of globalization and technological innovation in the twenty‐first century demands shorter decision cycle and stronger collaboration, too many companies haven't updated their org structures for the times. In fact, he writes, “having to cope with a fast‐changing global economy has led many companies to create even more complex matrix organizations, where it's harder to get the right people together for fast decision‐making.”

The original idea for creating matrixed organizations was to create intersections “between global businesses and local resources, between technical expertise and business units and among multiple functions,” as Susan Finerty puts it in her book Master the Matrix. Matrix organization structures first became fashionable in the 1960s in the aerospace industry, and then spread beyond in the ensuing decades. The approach has since become so common that organizations don't even necessarily use the word, matrix anymore—but that doesn't mean project managers and other employees aren't feeling frustrated by poorly defined roles and unclear lines of authority. Finerty writes:

Much has been written of project managers who sit at the crossroads between reporting through the project management structure and through their “business” boss as described above. But the matrix isn't just for project managers anymore. Informal matrices and matrixed teams are cropping up in organizations that don't call themselves “matrix organizations.” This once formally named and managed structure has morphed into overlapping organizational webs that are often navigated with little or no guidance. These webs are sprouting up as the traditional business structure of multiple, independently operated business units shifts to shared services, cross‐functional teams and “flatter” organizations. All these efforts are aimed at doing more with less and gaining “economies of scale,” and they all create matrices. In addition, automation, globalization, regulation, and legislation have created a reality in which few tasks, projects, or goals fall neatly into one person or team's bailiwick. Instead, they cut across teams, functions, and geographies.…

Matrix roles (and the challenges and frustrations that go with them) are everywhere. The field customer contact person who has to work through a maze of resources to write contracts, negotiate delivery and troubleshoot product issues. The product manager in Singapore who is simultaneously accountable for numbers in her country, region and business unit despite the fact they are in conflict. The HR person who reports to a globalized HR function, with a dotted line to the head of the business he/she supports. All of these are matrix roles. When the matrix practitioners I connected with described their matrix roles they used words like confusing, chaotic, convoluted and frustrating. Operating in a web of authority, on multiple dimensions and sometimes at cross‐purposes can be draining to even the most energetic matrix managers.

It's not hard to see how organizations can become very good at producing something bad: disconnects. Let's see if the following scenario sounds familiar. A company's strategy is deployed top‐down, cascading from the CEO and other executives to business silos, smaller units, and ultimately individuals. Along the way, each function develops its own metrics, often in isolation and cross‐purpose from other departments working toward the same goal. Silos are thus reinforced, and dysfunction rears its head.

Next‐generation project managers and PMOs have to learn to master the matrix and bridge organizational silos. The goal is a panoramic vision, and strategic mindset shared across the organization. The question is, how is this mindset developed exactly?

Connecting Business Activities and Organizational Priorities

To not only survive but thrive, every business must have a uniquely powerful strategy. But strategy means nothing without the right execution. And execution isn't possible if the strategy and the underlying business activities are misunderstood or ignored. That is why in this book one of the elements of the DNA of strategy execution is to connect, clarify, and align the strategy and business activities with the projects and PMOs.

A PMO dedicated to nothing but best project management practices and processes is a strategic opportunity wasted. Of course, many PMOs go beyond and practice portfolio management to align and prioritize projects and programs to the organization's strategy.

That's great. But the next generation PMO must go beyond and must be inspired by and infused with the organization's strategy. All of its activities must be unabashedly dedicated to advancing awareness of the strategy and ensuring its execution. This is its raison d'etre: to link projects and programs to the organization's portfolio priorities, and its broader business context and activities.

Large matrixed organizations with far‐flung offices and layers of middle management are seemingly designed to help people lose perspective. Teams become obsessed with putting points on the board, even if they're playing the wrong game. Key performance metrics may be achieved but not move the needle on strategy execution. Meanwhile, what really matters—customer experience and ultimately customer satisfaction—gets lost. This is tragic.

Businesses have always been built around customers, but because of the Copernican revolution in management I mentioned earlier, companies are increasingly competing to better understand and serve customers. The PMO has an important role to play here: in its many interactions with various parts of the organization, it can hammer home what every employee ought to have memorized: how the company's business model works and how it creates value for customers. The business model canvas (BMC), described in Chapter 4, is a great way to concisely and visually highlight all the components of a company's business model. It features nine elements covering everything from value proposition to cost structures to customer segments. You can use the output of the BMC and plugit into the business alignment matrix, also discussed in Chapter 4 to show how the project or PMO activities are aligned with the business and stakeholders.

Next‐generation project managers and PMOs ought to have an understanding of all business model components because that opens opportunities for them to add value. They can see key business value‐creating activities, and the channels through which it reaches different customer segments. Or fails to.

This last piece is critically important. PMOs have an opportunity to facilitate an organization‐wide understanding of the customer's perspective. It is human nature to only think from one's own perspective, or the perspective of your tribe, meaning team or business unit. But that's a recipe for complacency—which is what smart and agile companies try to fight against every day. Because by their very nature they intersect with all parts of an organization, PMOs are well positioned as a key ally in the fight to win in a customer‐centric world. Strategies are more and more customer focused—which means execution can only be successful if it keeps the customer's perspective in mind from start to finish.

Connecting Interfaces and Interdependencies

We all wish that we could work by ourselves and get things done, like craftspeople and artists, but project work by nature is interdependent. What makes it challenging is when you find out about a project underway that is, unbeknownst to the project team, reliant on another project's progress or success for its own progress. It's not just that the left‐hand doesn't know what the right‐hand is doing—it's that they're on a collision course. This is a common challenge as various parties in projects are loosely coupled, whereas the tasks themselves are tightly coupled and interdependent as observed in an MIT article, “What Successful Project Managers Do.” When unexpected (DANCE) events affect one task, many other interdependent tasks are also affected. Yet the direct responsibility for these tasks is distributed among various loosely coupled parties, who are unable to coordinate their actions and provide a timely response. Project success, therefore, requires interdependence, as well as an understanding of the related interfaces.

For each of the interface and interdependency, design appropriate people, process or tool resolution strategy that can enhance the flow. Overall the PMO can promote a culture of interface and interdependency awareness and focus on flow, and look for opportunities to remove any blockages that impact the flow and impede execution as discussed in Chapter 5.

Because project managers and PMOs reach across the organization, touching all kinds of projects and programs in the course of its activities, they can highlight interfaces and interdependencies that might be invisible to those in the trenches. They can illuminate all that the organization is doing to those with obstructed views—which is most people. Various good results can follow: interdependent projects can be better coordinated, expert resources can be efficiently shared, project redundancies can be avoided, and frustration about why certain teams can't obtain necessary resources to executive high‐priority projects can be alleviated.

In a perfect world, PMOs wouldn't be needed to play this integrative role: the organization would be so in tune with itself through the course of normal business activities that everyone would understand their full context.

Holacracy: Antidote to the Matrix?

In the age of agile, traditional organizational structures and the hierarchies and matrices they generate, are being challenged, and companies are trying radical new approaches on their tilt toward agility. One of the concepts is holacracy, made famous initially by Zappos, and online retailer, now owned by Amazon. Holacracy is an “operating system” for self‐management in organizations. It is based on the ideas of application of principles of complex adaptive systems. Instead of traditional hierarchies and job descriptions that might be revised every few years, the system “allows businesses to distribute authority, empowering all employees to take a leadership role and make meaningful decisions,” according to Holacracy.org. Roles are regularly updated to align with changing needs, teams self‐organize, decisions are made locally, and all are bound by the same rules, from the CEO on down.

This, at least, is how holacracy is supposed to work. Zappos, the online shoe and clothing store, is the most prominent company to have adopted the system wholesale. It started transitioning to the system in late 2014, and although about 6 percent of employees cited holacracy as the reason they were taking severance packages in 2015, CEO Tony Hsieh, a big proponent of holacracy, wanted to build a more self‐directed culture that gives employees a stronger sense of purpose—and unlocks innovation. He wrote:

Research shows that every time the size of a city doubles, innovation or productivity per resident increases by 15 percent. But when companies get bigger, innovation or productivity per employee generally goes down. So, we're trying to figure out how to structure Zappos more like a city, and less like a bureaucratic corporation.

Other organizations have tried holacracy but ultimately abandoned the system. The social media company Medium, for example, spent a few years operating through the system, but in March 2016 announced it was “moving beyond” the system because it was “difficult to coordinate efforts at scale.” Holacracy's “deep commitment to record‐keeping and governance” ultimately hindered a proactive attitude and sense of communal ownership,” wrote Medium Head of Operations Andy Doyle. But the management model most companies use is more than 100 years old—and Doyle said his company is determined to operate in ways to recognize the speed with which information flows today and the diversity of team members' talents.

Connecting Is Communicating

The effectiveness of connection depends on the quality of communications that flows through the connections. Communication is the lifeblood that flows through the organization and the survival of the organization, or for that matter project managers of PMOs depends on the quality of communication. For the most part, the level of communication is typically superficial and procedural—what to communicate, with whom, using what medium and with what frequency. What they rarely do is focus on the quality of communications and the behavioral dimensions of the stakeholder landscape. The key questions you need to address are: How do you connect, communicate, and build relationships and rapport with executives and key stakeholders at multiple levels? Particularly in today's turbulent world where everyone is drowning in multiplicity of communications, how do you get your stakeholders attention? How do you separate the noise from the signal and focus on what's important in a clear, concise, and direct manner that resonates? How do you navigate the politics and hidden agendas? How do you create a rich environment for straight talk based on trust, mutual respect, and collaboration?

Earlier in this chapter, I touched on the importance of understanding what's behind behaviors detrimental (or even adversarial) to a PMO's effectiveness. I noted that some new tools are starting to emerge that can help teams dig deeper to understand who they're dealing with. In truth, understanding the behavioral environment surrounding the PMO requires a lot more than just tapping the power of a specific tool. For the PMO to forge deep connections throughout the organization, it needs to think of itself as almost a steward of its environment, constantly appraising, and the specific personalities and interpersonal dynamics that surround it. It's a panoramic, never‐ending process.

Traditional communication approaches rely heavily on formal communication channels such as mass e‐mails (e‐newsletters), one‐to‐one e‐mails, scheduled meetings, and a project Website that can be updated. These plans to discount more informal channels like impromptu hallway conversations and coffees or lunches, which are rich, spontaneous, and interactive. They help not only in communicating but also in building connections and trusting relationships. Memos, website updates, e‐mails, and regularly scheduled meetings do not have the same impact. These formal channels used extensively, can have a numbing effect and lack the quality and intensity of the personal, on‐the‐spot interaction needed in today's world of information overload.

An argument against informal communication channels is that things can get out of control when discussions are informal, and there is no proof or documentation. Informal channels also introduce the opportunity for rumors spreading through the grapevine. While these are valid concerns, they can easily be addressed. Follow up informal conversations and communications with a written confirmation, or vice versa.

The idea is to strike a balance between using both formal and informal communication channels for the most effective way to gather input and deliver your message. Here are some tips to effectively balance the use of formal and informal communication channels while trying to forge connections throughout the PMO:

• Switch. Typically, formal communication channels are used first, and when there is no response, then you are compelled to use other informal means. A more effective way might be to use informal means first and then follow‐up with a formal confirmation. This way you have planted the seed; people are expecting your communication and may be more responsive.
• Seek feedback. Build ongoing feedback loops to assess whether you are using the right communication channels. Informal means are more effective to measure and gain insights about stakeholder satisfaction. Some people may not be comfortable speaking up in formal meetings, but they are more open in informal settings.

Formal communication is like a project's skeleton, providing structure. Informal channels are the nervous system that provides a network to facilitate communication. Both are necessary for navigating the matrix.

Why Communication Is Not Enough—You Need a Marcom Strategy

In today's world, it is not enough to have a communication plan; you need a marcom approach—marketing and communications strategy—to market, brand, and promote your initiative, project, program, or PMO. To overcome any negative perception, a marcom strategy is key to continuously have a pulse of the perception and manage expectations with appropriate messaging and communication.

Here are some useful tips to keep in mind as you, with the help of marcom experts, develop a plan for your project, program, or PMO.

• Plan your marcom by focusing on the objective (what you want to achieve), message (what you want stakeholders to know), and media (which communication vehicles best convey the message). You can also use marketing models such as AIDA for creating awareness, interest, desire, and action.
• Create a compelling message that will resonate with your target stakeholders. Be sure to address an immediate need or issue and focus on benefits. Don't be afraid to brand your PMO with a motto, such as Where strategy becomes a reality, or Connecting the C‐Suite to the Trenches.
• Develop elevator (60‐second) and water cooler (3‐ to 5‐minute) speeches. Train your project team so that everybody communicates crisp and consistent message.
• Explore the use of social media tools. Tweet your project, establish collaborative project wikis or blogs or podcast your sponsor or key stakeholders. (More on this below.)
• Be careful of overhype. Don't create too much buzz, oversell, or set too‐high expectations that can backfire.
• Iterate. Continue marcom plan activities on an ongoing basis. Tailor timely messages to specific target audiences, but stay consistent with the central theme and goals of the project.

PMO leaders who create and enact a comprehensive marcom plan will gain a distinct advantage and see their PMO receive greater buy‐in, implementation support, and overall acceptance across the organization.

Leveraging Social Media

Does your project or PMO have a social media strategy? Social media channels like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and many others have redefined our identities as friends, employees, and customers. These channels are ubiquitous and can be the initial step to get started with stakeholder and network analysis, just by Googling someone or glancing at their LinkedIn connections. To optimize their profile, relationships, and impact, PMOs must meet people where they so often are. They need to understand the power of particular social media channels and leverage them to understand and build their networks.

Social media present more than just relationship‐building opportunities, however. There's also huge potential for marcom, branding, and making your PMO's purpose and value proposition clear, as well as propagating viral ideas and content. Social media is also a great way to monitor various networks that ultimately determine the PMO's impact. For example, what are customers saying about the company's products and processes? Understanding what's working and what isn't ties directly into the PMO's ability to position itself as a crucial strategy execution vehicle. When the PMO can understand exactly how past projects have failed to deliver promised benefits, it can better assess the strategic promise of proposed or midstream projects—and potentially speak up to push for better alignment. Social media can also reveal what various internal stakeholders are saying about the PMO's processes or projects. Often, you can't afford to miss such feedback—if it's outside of normal company communication channels, it could very well be more candid than otherwise. Unvarnished opinions may sound harsh or feel unduly personal, but they need to be heard. Even if it's just a PMO perception problem, that's still a real problem. Tapping social media can be critical to uncover certain challenges the PMO faces in connecting across the organization and delivering on its promise.

Relationships: Strengthening Relationships and Developing Partnerships

Effective organizational project management and PMOs derives strength from the support of others and evolves on the basis of interpersonal relationships. It must be actively engaged in building and managing the network of relationships across the board. Healthy relationships build a rich platform for communication and collaboration. The more relationships we develop, the more potential partnerships and a rich environment for straight talk based on trust, mutual respect, and collaboration.

In a matrixed world of work, relationships are the lubrication that gets things done. Without them, we'd all just be confused cogs in a wheel that won't turn. Here's another pertinent passage from Susan Finerty's book Master the Matrix:

Job titles no longer bring with them everything needed to get the results that we are held accountable for. “Decision‐maker” distinctions that used to be illustrated by title and office size are disappearing. Pinpointing who is in the catbird seat becomes less and less clear, and multiple customer groups with disparate needs tapping into the same pool of resources drown out the traditional cry of “the customer is always right.”… Getting results in matrix roles is as different from traditional roles as basketball is from swimming. Different rules apply; different skills are needed.

The all‐important question is, what kind of relationships should you build, and where and when? Part of the answer here is somewhat straightforward: you want to target the people best positioned to lubricate the wheels that push a project or program forward to the finish line. That could mean external stakeholders (such as vendors or partner organizations) or internal stakeholders (such as a project's executive sponsor or team leader.)

What ideally should come out of all these relationships is a clear sense of partnership. Everyone should be crystal clear on what the common goals are, and have total clarity on the extent and responsibilities of each person's role, and respective decision‐making powers. Sorting all of this out helps any PMO or project leader manage the matrix and foster connections.

But some relationships won't be so oriented toward immediate work and needs—they aren't as transactional. For example, imagine a PMO that from time to time develops training programs for project managers. It would want to do so in partnership with the organization's human resources (HR) department. Sure, the PMO leader could just knock on HR's door and make its needs clear. But HR is much more likely to respond quickly and favorably if there is a prior, ongoing relationship between it and the PMO. If the connection is already there, there's already a foundation upon which to build the new training program. The PMO doesn't have to start from scratch, and the work at hand is likely to be more enjoyable because it will partly reflect the good will and collegial sense of shared mission between the PMO and HR.

Your connections define who you are and your clout, or lack thereof. Next‐generation project managers and PMOs need to constantly think about their 360‐degree landscape to widen and leverage the overlaps between their operational, personal, and professional network. This key question must be asked: who else do we need to proactively develop a partnership with to be successful? Don't want until tomorrow to find the answer. You need to be connecting and building bridges today.

Community and Collaboration

Connection and networks enable community and collaboration creating a vibrant digital ecosystem, beyond the silos. If you are working separately in a silo with 1,000 people, and you have 10 ideas, each person only has 10 ideas. If you are working in a collaborative sharing community, your collective intelligence is 10k ideas each. How do you create a rich platform for sharing and a collaborative community in your project management and PMO environment? You can transform or complement your PMO to a community‐oriented model, which is based on the concept of a community of practice (CoP).

A CoP is a group of people bound by common interest who are engaged in real work over a period. They build things, solve problems, and learn and invent new ways of doing things. In his book Communities of Practice, Learning, Meaning, and Identity, Etienne Wenger, PhD, a pioneer of CoP, defines it as a group of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do, and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.

Many companies like Google, Apple, Caterpillar, World Bank, and others have encouraged communities. They recognize the effectiveness of informal structures to promote learning and sharing of knowledge and best practices, coupled with the convergence and popularity of social networks and the associated collaboration technologies. A community‐based PMO can harness the knowledge that already exists within the organization. Instead of the PMO playing the role of an elite subject‐matter expert, it facilitates a subject‐matter network to propagate practices that are more relevant to the community.

How do you build a community‐based PMO? Created and initiate a number of communities such as methods and processes, learning and development, measurement and metrics, and strategy alignment. Facilitate the communities and provide a collaboration platform for the communities to meet, self‐organize, and improve practices.

In CoPs, the emphasis is on “practice” where practitioners practice, collaborate, and improve their craft and produce results. Each community can create its own plan. For example, the strategy alignment community could develop a project management methodology with tools and templates that were meaningful to them.

If you think that your organization is not ready to implement a full‐fledged community model, you can start small. As a pilot, you can start a lunch‐and‐learn group of people who are interested in project management (for example) and pick a topic to discuss, work, and improve upon. As word spreads and people see results, you can grow the community organically.

Do you want to build a dreaded control‐oriented PMO—or a sandbox where everybody wants to come and play? A community‐based PMO is an effective way to transform your project management culture and gain buy‐in and acceptance of your PMO. People help create it. Why would they resist or reject it?

Don't get dejected if initially your community does not take off, or after its peak it gradually withers away. This is normal, as you see with Internet groups on different platforms, communities have their own lifecycle and resurgence, just like any social groups. To make it effectively work and sustain it needs good facilitation and leadership skills.

Leadership isn't about making people do things; it's about making people want to do things. PMOs should ideally be cultivating a space where people can connect with each other, solve common problems, and collaborate in creating methods that are appropriate for them. The goal is a virtuous cycle, where people volunteer to share lessons learned and influence each other to use best practices. Project management spreads from the bottom‐up, and everyone collectively owns and values best practices, while also understanding their larger purpose: strategy alignment and execution.