Greetings Leaders!
Statistically speaking, the 80/20 rule seems to apply to almost every situation. When it comes to your staff, it means that 20% of the people do 80% of the work. What would happen if we could somehow raise the level of performance of the 80%, just a bit? Or better yet, how can we move the bell curve to the right so that 40% of the people do 80% of the work? By moving the bell curve to the right, if the original 20% stay productive, and you increase the productivity of 25% of the rest of your staff, the amount of work that got done would have to go up. So, how do we go about accomplishing this?
The basic solution is pretty simple. Identify the 25% that are motivated to change and target your performance improvement program on that 25%.
When it comes to project management, you don’t increase productivity by just implementing a bunch of processes and procedures. These will help, but will only get you so far. The real benefit comes with training your Project Managers in how to lead. So my question to you is, what kind of leadership development program do you have for your project managers, and who is providing it?
As a consultant, I’ve been in a lot of organizations. In most cases there is no cohesive leadership development program targeted specifically at project managers and the results are predictably hit or miss.
To improve your project results, try the following:
- Identify the top 20% of your performers.
- Of the remaining 80%, identify the top 25%.
- Create an organization wide training program to develop these leaders.
- The program should include the following:
- Some sort of certification. Not necessarily PMI.
- A well defined PM process for the organization that is grilled into your PMs
- How to run meetings
- How to handle conflict
- How to speak effectively
- Conflict Resolution
- How to Lead vs. How to Manage
- Ethics and Values
The last thing to consider is who should provide the training? If training or mentoring is currently available, it is probably being provided by a senior manager. While effective at times, this is not your best solution. These managers may be good at leading, but can they teach it? Have your Senior Managers gone through training in how to develop others? Most organizations mistakenly assume that a title equates to capability to develop or teach others. This could not be further from the truth. Spend some time developing a leadership development program and then educate your Senior Managers on how to implement it.
All the best!
All the time!
JT
Related articles
- A Lesson in Project Management and Leadership From Amelia Earhart (projectmanagementessentials.wordpress.com)
- Surprising ways to make your team more productive (worksurvival.wordpress.com)
- The Pace of the Leader (80/20 Rule) (totalxpression.wordpress.com)
