I was invited for dinner one day by a young man in the construction industry for some advice on his business. On arrival at the dinner place, I was surprised to find it was his home, where he shared adjoining houses with his dad and brother. I was also surprised that his senior management team was there. It was a lovely and relaxed setting, though. My young daughter had a great time joining in with his nephews playing with members of the management team.
The background and the problem
The construction company was set up over 30 years ago by the Dad, a very genial engineer building on his contacts and his relationship with regulators, industry, customers and staff. The Son is the heir apparent, learning the ropes after returning from actuary school. Other than a young assistant, also present was a senior project manager, a quiet man who observed but didn’t say much and a more voluble lady who ran the accounts and administration. The company then had four projects ran by four project managers, all very experienced sexagenarians and one septuagenarian, who like the senior management team, had been with the Dad for a very long time. All-in-all, a very typical small company set up.
The Son then explained to me his frustrations that the projects were constantly coming in delayed and over budget. It seems to be a common occurrence in the construction industry in that city and the Son was at a loss on how to reverse the trend. He has brought in a team of younger project managers but they were not yet ready to take over. As he did not have the engineering knowledge that his father had, he relied on the senior project manager to directly supervise the four projects. He instead stayed in the office to focus on building the processes and controls needed to take the company forward. He felt hampered by not readily having the data that he felt was necessary to run the operations.
The fast solution
It would seem a very open and shut kind of answer for a project management consultant. The company was lacking a dashboard, which would have provided all the information that the Son required. Any project management consultant worth his salt would be happy to sell them such a dashboard, especially for such a standardised industry like construction. There are plenty of construction portfolio management software that help manage a portfolio of projects. I would have been happy to introduce one to the company.
Looking a bit deeper, though, it was fast becoming clear to me that the issue went far beyond the dashboard. First of all, I felt that introducing a dashboard to elderly project managers in the 60s and 70s is setting it up for failure. For one thing it is hard to teach old dogs new tricks. For another, I pointed out to the family that this is likely the last projects for these elderly project managers. I do not think any of them would want to risk failure in the last project in their career by changing to an unfamiliar project management methodology required by the software. The Dad nodded appreciatively that they are likely only be able to get another one or two projects out of these project managers, something that has apparently escaped their notice.
Root cause
The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to be to be a case of problems in transiting from the more informal style of management of the Dad to the more structured and data driven style of the actuary Son. I advised the Son that it is necessary for him to do regular field visits rather rely totally on the senior project manager to supervise them. He protested that he did not have the knowledge or experience to be able to add value to what went on the field. These were attributes that the senior project manager had in abundance, and it was a more direct fit to the role.
I told him that the objective is not so much to tell them what to do but rather to affirm the progress of their work. I explained that when the Dad went down to the projects, it was like the Queen was visiting, to the project managers and the entire project team. They would be proud to show off the work that they have done and to seek affirmation that they are on the right track. That is the role of the CEO. There would be a COO to run the daily operations, a role that the senior project manager fulfilled well. They both have different roles and mixing roles makes for confusing leadership.
Building for the future
I was able to tease out of the Son that there was friction between the team of young project managers he had put together and the elderly project managers they were supposed to shadow. Would this be a surprise? I suggested that it would be better if the team of youngsters would be understudy the elderly project managers. There is something about older people wanting to teach younger ones. And if these youngsters are able to bring out the paternal instincts in the elder project managers by constantly asking questions and seeking to learn from them, they would be much better accepted by the project managers, making one less battle to fight and one less fire to put out. You are always more partial to someone you mentored. As young people who still have a lot to learn, it is no point deploying them to fight the system but rather to learn as much as they can so that they can supplant it.
In the bigger picture, there really isn’t much point for an inter-generational war in a small company like this one, or any company of any size for that matter. And in particular this company, where there is a close relationship between the founder family and the staff. Indeed, the Son had a story of how he once told the staff of the company that he owed his degree to them as it was their hard work that paid for putting him through college. I thought it is something very touching to say to employees of one’s own father.
It is probably better to work for a more gradual transition so that the Son can eventually take over the company with a new team more attuned to his management methods, but being used to apply the knowledge and experience inherited from the older generation. After all, he would acknowledge that he owes it to these old-timers to see out their respective careers peacefully. The Dad still has a role to play since the old-timers owe him their loyalty. The question is whether the Dad’s charisma is sufficient keep them productive even as they see change happening all around them. They need reassurance that this change will not impact them significantly as long as they continue to be productive in their own way, even as their methods are becoming increasingly irrelevant in a modern world, that is connected and computerized.
In the meantime, the Son will have his hands full with several things. For one, he has to effect a transfer of knowledge and experience that the old-timers have accumulated to him and his team. All these, while they continue to be productive in the twilight of their career, assisted by youngsters who may still be a little green. As in any company that is transiting from one team to another or one paradign or another, someone has to do double work: build the new paradigm, while milking the old paradigm to pay for the transition.
The most important transfer of knowledge, though, will be from his Dad to him. Whether the Dad’s methods fit his methods or not, the contacts that the Dad has built up cannot be unhelpful. Even if the Son’s way of doing things, or his skill-sets, doesn’t not fully exploit these contacts, he can always call on the Dad to make some phone calls. As long as the Dad is still around, that is.
Other than working to build systems and processes in the office demanded by modern work practices, the Son will also have to build up a new team to take over from the old-timers, who will be retiring soon. It will need to be a well-bonded team, much like the Dad’s team bonded well around the Dad’s charisma. And like good wine, bonding always takes time to mature. Time for the bonding itself to happen and time to develop the value sets around which the bonding has to coalesce. Time and lots of very conscious concerted efforts.
All in all, I found it a very interesting advisory request and I wish them well.
I will be expanding on all these points in future articles.
Conclusion
The project management fraternity often gets carried away with their Body of Knowledge and their tools. They have beautifully constructed dashboards, and project charters that could be useful in running projects, if certain perquisites are in place. But project failures are still as common as they were before, in spite of these tools, or maybe even because of them. Because they distract us from what is to me the true core skill of project managers: the ability to look a person in the eye and know whether they will deliver for us or not.
Ultimately, project management is more about management and less about projects. The noun is management, and project is only the adjective. What we do is to manage; we just happen to do it in a project environment, that’s all. And managing is about knowing people: knowing what people are thinking, knowing why they are thinking what they are thinking and most importantly, knowing what people are feeling and knowing (and having to skills) what you need to do to make them feel something else if necessary. So, let us put the skill of knowing people in the forefront of our management techniques and rely less of shiny tools that impresses the eye but do not know the human heart.
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