Project Leadership

Timothy J. Kloppenborg PhD, PMP, Arthur Shriberg EdD, Jayashree Venkatraman MS, MBA

• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781567264104
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Project Management
• Index: Business

This book traces the development of project leadership as fundamental to completing projects effectively, delineates the leadership tasks that must be accomplished at each step of a project's life, and helps the reader develop wisdom in making decisions both by learning the ramifications of certain decisions and by seeing how those decisions are made in an example project.

CHAPTER 1

The Origins of Project Leadership

In this chapter we first discuss the basics of management and then review the two “children” of management that evolved in the latter part of the last century: leadership and project management. As we help the reader understand the basics of these three key disciplines, we will pave the way for discussion of a new approach that is evolving in the twenty-first century: project leadership. Figure 1-1 illustrates this evolution from management to project leadership.

MANAGEMENT

The practice of management, defined for many centuries as planning, organizing, directing, and controlling, has existed since early times. Building the Great Wall of China, running the Roman Empire, and preparing armies for battle all required management skills; until the late nineteenth century, however, management was usually viewed as an art that was passed on from generation to generation by oral tradition. In the last hundred years, the science of management has developed. While management was once defined as “the ability work through others,” today most definitions are similar to the one offered by Courtland Bouee, in his book Management: “Management is the process of attaining organizational goals by effectively and efficiently planning, organizing, leading and controlling the organization’s human, physical, financial and informational resources.”¹ This definition is presented graphically in Figure 1-2.

FIGURE 1-1 The Evolution of Project Management

These four management activities can be described as:

• Planning. The process of creating goals and developing ways to achieve them has undergone dramatic changes in recent years as organizations have begun to think of goals and plans at three levels. Strategic planning is set at organizational levels and is usually of long duration. Tactical planning is set by middle managers to support corporate goals, is related to individual departments, and is usually of middle duration, often less than year. Operational planning is set by first-line management, to be achieved in the short run by individuals or departments.

• Organizing. The traditional method of organizing is by function or division. In recent years the trend has been to organize work by teams and networks with the aim of minimizing levels of decision-making. Organizations are flatter, and line and staff rules are being integrated in new ways.

FIGURE 1-2 The Elements of Management

Source: Based on Courtland Bouee, Management (New York: McGraw Hill, 1993), p. 5.

• Leading. Today, the whole question of the leader’s role in ethical decision-making and responding to a wide variety of stakeholders—not just more senior leaders—is a central question.

• Controlling. We have moved from a very centralized controlling system to a model whereby every associate is in the quality control business. Continuous improvement is key in all organizations.

All these functions are now being viewed in the context of the organizational mission and values. The development of a statement of purpose or “mission statement,” once just assumed to be profit maximization, is now a central and continuous function of management.

Throughout the twentieth century, several schools of management thought developed. These approaches, all of which still play a role, include the classical approach, the human relations movement, management science, systems theory, total quality management, and learning organizations.

The classic approach to management, also called “scientific management,” focuses on the processes that workers use and attempts to find the best way to perform a task. We entered the industrial era seeking better (defined as more efficient) ways of doing things. Time and motion studies were the norm. Another aspect of this classical period in management was the evolution of classical organization theory—a school of thought that argued that work should be divided into logical functional areas, with each person having one boss. This led to the concept of bureaucracy, which was viewed as a means of ensuring productivity. The key aspects of bureaucracy (which over the years has taken on a negative connotation) are specialization of labor, formal procedures and rules, impersonal systems, clear hierarchy, and career advancement based on the quantity of productivity.

Many of these principles do not regard employees as human beings making specific contributions and having individual needs and concerns. As the century progressed, the human relations movement began. This movement stated that the path to success was through satisfying workers’ basic needs, which would make the workers more productive. Behavioral scientists from a variety of disciplines helped companies understand that workers did indeed have different needs and, as these needs were satisfied, the workers became more productive. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, shown in Figure 1-3, still guides many decision-makers.

As we made progress in the mathematical sciences, the impact of the management science perspective grew. We learned that mathematical models and other statistical techniques could assist managers in making key decisions.

FIGURE 1-3 Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Source: Based on Arthur Shriberg, David Shriberg, and Carol Lloyd, Practicing Leadership, 2nd ed. (New York: Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2002, p. 23.

During World War II, several new approaches to management developed that are still called “contemporary management.” The development of systems theory taught us that organizations are a set of interrelated parts that should function in a coordinated way to achieve a common goal. This led to a response that not all variables can be controlled and the development of a “contingency view,” which states that managers often have to say “it depends” and make different decisions depending upon the particular situation.

The total quality movement began in the 1950s in Japan and did not truly come into vogue in the United States until the 1980s. The best known spokesperson for this movement, W. Edward Deming, developed a list of 14 points that must all be followed to ensure that total quality exists in an organization. Operationally, many managers have distilled the intent of Deming’s list to: thoroughly understand all your customers, empower your employees, make decisions based on facts, and continually improve all your work processes.

Today, the concept of learning organizations has taken center stage. This concept implies that organizations are living entities that can learn, grow, and adapt to the environment. The more quickly organizations can change, the more likely it is that they will gain an advantage over their competitors.

Management has changed in many ways in the last hundred years, but all these theories are still practiced in many settings. It was in the last half of the twentieth century that leadership and project management began to evolve from management into separate disciplines.

LEADERSHIP

While there is substantial agreement on the elements and definition of management, there is little agreement on the definition of leadership, its functions, or even whether or not it is a discipline (although increasingly scholars agree that it is). Our favorite definition of leadership is: “an influence relationship among leaders and their collaborators, who intend real change that reflects their shared purpose.”²

In his book On Leadership, John Gardner states that the functions of leadership are:

1. Envisioning goals

2. Affirming and regenerating important group values

3. Motivating others toward collective goals

4. Managing the process through which these collective goals can be achieved

5. Achieving unity of effort through pluralism and diversity

6. Creating an atmosphere of mutual trust

7. Explaining and teaching

8. Serving as a symbol of the group’s identity

9. Representing the group’s interest to outside parties

10. Renewing and adapting the organization to a changing world.³

We have identified ten different approaches to the study of leadership, as shown in Figure 1-4. Each is part of most leadership theories and each needs to be practiced in new ways in this century.

Trait Theory

It has long been accepted that, by studying the traits of others, we can learn how they function. After World War II, when the field of leadership began to emerge as a separate discipline, people often believed that the way to be an effective leader was to study others they perceived as effective. Biographies of leaders are plentiful. Studies of their various traits abound. Again, we turn to Gardner, who teaches us that leaders most often have the following attributes:

FIGURE 1-4 21^st Century Approaches to the Study of Leadership

1. Physical vitality and stamina

2. Intelligence and action-oriented judgment

3. Eagerness to accept responsibility

4. Task competence

5. Understanding of followers and their needs

6. Skills in dealing with people

7. Need for achievement

8. Capacity to motivate people

9. Courage and resolution

10. Trustworthiness

11. Decisiveness

12. Self-confidence

13. Assertiveness

14. Adaptability.⁴

While others may choose different traits, these types of traits have always been valued. Daniel Goldman, in his highly acclaimed work, The Handbook of Emotional Intelligence, teaches us that self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills are the keys to being a great leader.⁵

Group Skills

Groups need information givers, gatekeepers, consensus builders, and many other roles to be filled. Courses in group dynamics are taught in an effort to develop these skills.

Today the emphasis is on how to turn a group into a team and on ensuring that the team empowers all its members to be effective and productive in implementing shared goals. Organizational workers (often called associates or partners) are increasingly being encouraged to build effective teams and to provide input into all aspects of the teams’ goals. While at one time most people were evaluated solely on their individual productivity, the concept of mutual dependence is growing; each year more of us are evaluated at last in part based on the productivity of our “team.”

The modern leader understands that effe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright
• About the Authors
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• CHAPTER 1 The Origins of Project Leadership
• CHAPTER 2 Project Initiating
• CHAPTER 3 Project Planning
• CHAPTER 4 Project Executing
• CHAPTER 5 Project Closing
• CHAPTER 6 Project Leadership Challenges
• Appendix A Project Leadership Assessment: Organizational
• Appendix B Project Leadership Assessment: Individual
• Appendix C Project Leadership Assessment: Team
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index