Leftfield Project Solutions

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Industry Calls for Leadership

October 10, 2007: Industry leaders have issued a challenge to all project managers to take leadership in delivering business strategies.
To find out more about this, click on this link to the AIPM's website. 

"People in Projects" Forums Facilitated by LeftField

LeftField Project Solutions successfully partnered with the Tasmanian Training Consortium (TTC) to facilitate several short People in Projects forums in Hobart during February 2008.  The forums were also supported by the Tasmanian Department of Premier and Cabinet's Inter-Agency Policy and Projects Unit, along with the Tasmanian chapter of the Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM).  Obviously a popular topic, the initial session sold out quickly and a second session offered in the following week also reached capacity registration.

Professional recognition of the people related need:

When the new professional development framework was released by the AIPM in 2007, it recognised the need for a stronger focus on people management in addition to the traditional, technically focused elements of project management.  Savvy project managers have known this for a long time!

Improving people and project capability:

Reinforcing this, the TTC People in Projects forums aimed to provide participants with useful techniques and tips that could be easily applied to working better with people (whether in project teams or in the broader stakeholder context). The forums also sought to encourage people to extend their skills development by offering a "taste" of the content of the new People in Projects workshops that are being offered through the TTC in 2008. (Refer to the TTC website for dates, costs and workshop flyers).

Feedback leads to better performance:

One of the ongoing challenges of the short forum format is how to anticipate and meet individual participant expectations.  It can be a challenge to give a "taste" of a two day workshop experience in two hours, especially when there are 35-50 people in a room, each with their own expectations of what will be covered and how content should be delivered.  Sounds pretty much like a typical project stakeholder scenario doesn't it?

Working with people means dealing with diversity:

While some participants were keen to get a high level introduction, then take away the tools and techniques to trial later in their workplace, other participants wanted more thorough coverage of content than could be achieved within a 2 hour timeframe.  Some participants registered a preference for an informational "10 steps" checklist approach, while others wanted time for discussion.

Feedback from the first session gave the facilitators some valuable insights and as a result the second session was better crafted to take the wide range of participant needs into account.  Subsequent feedback from the second session indicated that the balance between discussion, information giving, personal stories, and skills practice contributed to a very successful learning experience.

Relevant tools encourage take up:

Of the tools offered, McCarthy's 4MAT model was a popular take away (particularly with respect to it's relevance to planning project communications).  The Organisational Iceberg model and the Powerful Conversations framework also struck a chord with many participants.

LeftField Facilitator insight!!

We suspect that individual style preferences are key to why some project managers find the "people side of projects" such a challenge (and it was obvious that some of our forum participants found the interactive side of the session less than satisfying!)

In our experience, trying to deconstruct people issues to a timely checklist or process will always produce inferior results!  Effective people management relies on quality interactions and that's what Leftfield workshops demonstrate and encourage.  The skill of working with people is not in how to build a process - it's in how to build a connection!

People dimension in projects adds complexity:

Innovation and flexibility remain key drivers for future offerings by the LeftField team.  We don't believe that there is a definite template for how to go about getting better people outcomes in projects.  However we have seen plenty of examples of what works well and what doesn't and it will be interesting to share there as we add valueto the ongoing dialogue about "people in projects".