The right approach

Transparent collaboration among stakeholders is the key to better your performance. Adesh Jain writes about the ways in which a project can reach a successful conclusion

Aligning stakeholders is the key to awakening ‘project consciousness’. Whenever we undertake projects it is in regard to building the future which in turn gives rise to the challenge of facing numerous uncertainties. The conflicting interests of various stakeholders, a common aspect in most projects, adds to the level of uncertainties that have to be managed in the project. Stakeholders view a project from different perspectives with different expectations and the possible inward looking quest of ‘What is in it for me’ makes it extremely difficult to create a common denominator.

Trust amongst the stakeholders must be the starting point at the beginning of the project to create benefit through the project for all the stakeholders. When we begin the project it is essential that we start with the end in mind. This end should be viewed keeping in mind the expectations of all the stakeholders. The goal of envisioning a new future must get translated into evolving strategies. This is the end that we need to consider first before making any beginning. In the first phase of implementing our strategies, projects are undertaken which use resources and produce outcomes. Operations are the second phase of our strategies where we exploit the outcomes by operational efficiency to realise the benefits.

Excessive ‘monitoring’ by management with the vested interest of directing and controlling the project is totally out of date. This presumes that the person who is monitoring the project is more knowledgeable about resolving the complexities whereas in real life this may not be true. External monitoring should be minimal and internal assessment should take precedence. This can happen only when we develop an attitude of trust that the other party is as much interested or even more interested to realise the ‘end benefit’ for which a project was undertaken. There are basically two types of conflicts which could take place when we undertake projects:

Conflict 1: This is between one project in regard to other projects. The project selection can be more effective when we look at the priority of the aim and ensure whether we are actually clear about the result, that we want to achieve. The project could be independent or part of a portfolio management. As resources are limited, the value proposition of where best to deploy the resources should be built into the selection process.

Conflict 2: This is between a project and the stakeholders. The stakeholders are so diversified and have their own vested interest in the project that it is impossible to arrive at 100 per cent alignment among them. It is a big challenge to minimise the sum total of stakeholders' conflict level. However, instead of looking for 100 per cent agreement between the stakeholders, we should instead look at how we can maximise the value proposition that will satisfy the larger community of stakeholders. This can easily be achieved through transparency as that alone provides metrics and measurements through which the stakeholders can judge the rationale. Trust and Transparency (T2) become the main drivers in minimising stakeholder conflicts. T2 can only be sustainable if what we ‘think’ is what we ‘say’ and what we ‘do’. Aligning three vectors if I take shelter of mathematics, makes the correlation maximum when they are fully aligned.

In today’s era of globalisation, the rate of change is unprecedented. Never before in the history of civilisation, has the interconnectivity amongst human beings across the globe been almost instantaneous. What we see is the beginning of a new world in formation. This new world requires a driving force based on ‘right information’ increasing the probability of taking right decisions and thus achieving the desired end. Experts must pool their resources to do crystal gazing in terms of risk management. Future holds many risks, therefore, risks must be viewed from 360 degrees by those who could be in a better position to forecast. Forecasting the possible outcomes, based on risks, is the major challenge for proactive actions and not merely the post mortem of what we could have done.

The customers or the owners need not have the depository of all expertise. They must collaborate in a seamless transparent way with the consultants and contractors. The integration of customers, consultants and contractors (IC3) holds the key in dynamically taking full cognisance of the changes happening in a project in context of the environment and pooling their best resources to take mid course corrective actions. We must not confine the expert nodal points only with owners. Often contractors have a better understanding of the ground reality being the ‘foot soldiers’. The collaboration amongst all the players in on expertise. Experts must use metrics in simple formats to the extent that even non-experts can understand them easily. Again, this can only happen if there is no vested interest of an individual party but the optimisation of the whole and not of parts. In control system, it is often said that the optimisation strategies for a system often differs from that of sub-systems. Through transparent collaboration we can together build a better ‘whole’ as a society and as a profession instead of optimising parts by focusing on ‘what is in it for me’ syndrome. The challenge in today’s interconnected world is to transform to project mindset. The phrase ‘project mindset’ was introduced by the author of this paper while conducting a half day seminar on ‘Project Mindset — the key to competitiveness’ in Stockholm, Sweden in August 1999. It is the project mindset which can provide a platform for transparent collaboration. let us look briefly at some of the characteristics of project mindset.

• When a man is intelligent, he thinks about the whole picture first and it is later that the picture gets divided into details. It is in this light that we need to be on the balcony and the dancing floor simultaneously.

We need to wear reading glasses so as to be ready to take them off when looking at the far objects that is, focussing on the vision and mission. We look at the system holistically and then break it down to sub-systems and then in the second phase, integrate sub-systems/parts into the system.

• Project mindset is a condition of ‘holistic’ state reflecting seamless connectivity of benefits/realisation first to its execution later. In this process, we focus on conclusions first. In a way, we can say that in project management, we must choose the right project before executing the project right. The selection of the right project can take place only if we look at the various conclusions first.
• Project mindset views the known and unknown in parallel with a aim to reduce the ratio of unknown to known. Unknowns give rise to uncertainties. Future is not known and therefore inherently uncertain. It is a challenge to accelerate the rate of reduction of uncertainties to reach the end as visualised.
• Project mindset constantly applies the art and science of managing change. The ‘science’ component is relatively simple as it can be rationalised but it is the challenge to project mindset in dealing with the ‘art’ part — component of human behaviour. It is an iceberg where the tip is the science and submerged part, which we may not see, is the art. The part of art is in a way related to behavioral domain of individuals and that of the team.

IPMA Competency Baseline (ICB) pays a lot of emphasis on both the art and science components of managing change through project mindset. Behavioral, technical and contextual domains of ICB are significant in constantly managing change.

• Project mindset adapts dynamically without adjusting to the human value. Project mindset is not chained with the predetermined or precedents. It encourages to encounter new challenges never faced before rather than repeating the same encounters or experience again and again. It is akin to breaking boundaries to innovate but often this part of project mindset is stifled as there is no need to do things differently than what we are used to.