Forward Momentum: Delivering Results

By Darrell G. Stiffler, PMP

Subject matter experts (SMEs) are generally a very valuable asset to a project manager (PM). However, as a PM, you must be prudent in how much authority and control is given to or taken by a SME. Additionally, you must be aware that a SME can slowly erode your authority, even without a direct confrontation.  When a PM begins to have the authority slowly taken away by a SME, it is called “SME creep.”

I’ve been there. You have been assigned a project to manage and you don’t have experience in the area that you’re about to manage; a project that could make or break your career.  As Frank, the boss, gives you your assignment, you’re wondering if he is speaking English. He is throwing acronyms and technical jargon at you so fast that your head is swimming. However, as if to wish you lots of luck, he reassures you by saying, “Now I am asking Bob, our SME in this area, to give you support and be there to help, if you should need him. Of course, he has his full time job, and so he may be a little slow in responding to you.”

Just great. You’re responsible for the project – assuming you can untangle the jargon into plain English – and someone else has all the knowledge. Your team is looking to you for guidance and direction. Bob is working a 50 hour work week, just trying to keep his head above water. You want to set up a meeting with Bob.

You send Bob an email and say, “What is a good time for us to meet to talk about this project?” You’re trying to be understanding and cooperative. That is a nice consideration. However, you are sending the wrong message to start the project. What you are subliminally saying is, “I recognize your time is more valuable than mine, so I will let you take the lead.”

Some may disagree with my interpretation of this situation, and that is OK. I realize there are SMEs out there that would not take it that way and would be thankful that you where being considerate. Then there are others that would, perhaps subconsciously, take it just the way I presented it. Bob sends you back an email stating that he will be able to squeeze you in tomorrow at 5:30 PM, knowing that the standard working hours are 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM at his office. You realize that you are a salaried “professional” and sometimes (most of the time) you have to work a “professional day” (which means no overtime), so you agree. Strike two for you. By letting Bob set the location, you once again are giving him the upper hand and implying that you must go to Bob instead of him coming to you.

You show up at his office two minutes early. He is on the phone talking “technical speak.” He motions for you to come in. He raises up one finger, indicating that he will just be a minute. So you sit there looking around the room at all the technical posters and books that have multi-syllable words in the title. You glance at your watch and that one finger minute has turned into ten minutes and Bob’s conversation shows no sign of slowing down.

Strike three. Bob obviously does not respect your time or he would have ended the conversation when you walked into the room. You haven’t spoken a word about the project and you have already lost control.

It just goes downhill from here. After you have waited for 15 minutes, Bob finally gets off the call and apologizes profusely. Don’t let that fool you. You begin the conversation by giving him a little background on yourself. He stops you after about two minutes into your opening and says, “Frank,” (your boss), “tells me you’re a little ‘weak on experience’ on this project.” He clears his throat. “Don’t worry, I know enough about this project for both of us.” This is another bad sign. He does not want to listen to you because he thinks he knows everything, and the boss has confided in him that you are “weak” on the subject.

I could go on with this scenario, but that would be just more to read and you wouldn’t get much out it except more ways of identifying that you were in trouble.

Consider this approach: Interrupt Bob and say that you are glad he is on the team. This is very subtle way of telling him he is a team member, not the team leader. Secondly, say, “This meeting has run over the time I had allotted. Do this for me,” (in a friendly tone), “put together a list of the deliverables. Do you know how to do a WBS? After drafting a WBS, would you put together resource requirements with roles and responsibilities, and then a time estimate, based upon your suggested resource requirements, and show me a time line and the critical path? You’re probably the best choice to do this since you are so familiar with the project requirements.”

Wow, what did you just do?! By him making the statement that he knew enough for the both of you about the project, he just said, “I am the only person that knows what to do.” So you loaded him up with enough work to “choke a horse”!

If he is all “techie,” he won’t know how to do those tasks, so he will have to refer back to you for guidance and it will be clear that you have taken back the leadership role. If he does know how to do all those assignments, that’s great; you can grade his papers. In either case, you are clearly the one in charge. Be fair with your evaluation of his work, but make it obvious that you are supervising him, not just taking everything he does as gospel. This will reinforce your authority. If you can, get together a committee that you obviously run and put his work in front of a committee, reinforcing the point that he is part of a team.

As with most everything in project management, this is a “situational” scenario. You must adapt to the personally of the SME and the operational process assets of your organization. I hope you are never put in this situation. However, if you are, you might consider this approach.

Good Luck.

By Karey Rees

I don’t know about you, but one of my biggest frustrations in the workplace is meetings that go on long past their scheduled time allotment or those that finish within their scheduled time, took a crazy turn, went completely off topic and seemed to accomplish nothing related to the original meeting subject.  I’m sure most of you can relate, so I’d like to share my experience about a recent meeting I was in and how it influenced me to improve the ways I’ve conducted all my meetings since.

Not so long ago I was invited to attend a meeting via conference call. The meeting was scheduled for 30 minutes and was to cover quite a bit of material and training. I automatically blocked out 60 minutes on my calendar as past experience has told me, many times over, the meeting would last quite a bit longer than the scheduled 30 minutes. I dialed in, connected to the assigned WebEx screen and introduced myself to the other attendees. The meeting sponsor started the meeting immediately and explained there was only 30 minutes and all topics to be discussed had to be completed in those 30 minutes, no exceptions. Guess what? It got done – really. As I sat in amazement during this meeting about how much was discussed and accomplished in a very short period of time, I made sure to listen as closely as I could to learn this meeting magic.

After several meetings with this meeting sponsor, I’ve learned and now use the following to lead all my group meetings:

• Schedule your meeting for the time you truly think you can accomplish what needs to be done and stick to that time frame.
• Throughout the meeting, remind attendees of the topics at hand and how much time is left to discuss the topics.
• Be sure to speak up and let someone know if they are off topic. Make sure to let them know you will follow up with them to discuss what they would like to talk about and also include any other people who may be needed. Most of the time, the off-topic items can be discussed and resolved very briefly after the meeting.
• If the meeting topics truly do not fit in the allotted time, schedule a follow up meeting instead of going over time and creating conflicts in others’ schedules.
• Be diligent in moving along the topics of the meeting, keeping careful watch of the time.

I hope these points are as helpful to you as they have been to me. What are some of the things you’ve done to successfully keep meetings within their scheduled time allotment?

by Lana Boiko, PMP

Perhaps the most common environment a typical project manager works in is a matrix organization.  Given this circumstance, a lot of project managers not only have no formal authority when it comes to our clients, but also have limited formal authority within our own company. Often the most successful project managers are the ones who develop a methodology and leadership style that allows them to effectively overcome formal authority limitations.

Typical concerns that arise from limited authority situations are: lack of decision-making power, less responsiveness from within the project team and weaker negotiation positions for potential scope and schedule change requirements, to name a few.

So, is managing without authority an art, a science or a technique?  The good news is that there are effective ways to overcome the situation with all of the above, and you can tailor your approach based on your personal management style and preferences. Of course, the process will require significant effort, continuous fine tuning and a good amount of patience and flexibility.

Established Project Processes
The first and most widely accepted way to control the project is through the project process.  The key feature of this approach is that processes provide the necessary structure for your project delivery. Controlling through the process is more likely to be effective in teams where the processes have been established for some time and have been used repeatedly and consistently through multiple projects.  In other words, when your team members understand exactly what to do and how to do it and have been through the process multiple times, your project runs a lot smoother and situations where a strong formal authority is required are few and far apart.

Another nice thing about controlling through the process is that the project manager’s authority is implicit as that of a person responsible for managing the process.  Clear project documentation will have a significant positive effect if controlling a project through process is your primary management mechanism.

Varying Processes
What if you work in an environment where projects vary significantly, driven by major differences in scope, stakeholders’ priorities and project team structures? If you are a consultant, this situation is probably what you live in. Here, controlling through the process is probably not as effective. If the processes have been developed before you joined the project, you have to learn and adopt them. If those processes are not in place yet, developing and establishing them will take some time.

Controlling your project though metrics may become a good addition to your tool kit.  It is generally accepted wisdom that you get what you measure. Carefully study objectives of a project and stakeholders’ expectations and priorities.  Most people cannot allocate appropriate focus to more than three to four measurable parameters on any particular project.  Pick three or four metrics to monitor that would have the biggest impact on the success of a project and on stakeholder’s satisfaction. Measure, review, document diligently, and publish the results in a way that is visible to the team and is easily accessible.

Leveraging Your Personal Style and Competence
The more experienced project and program managers may also rely on developing and then leveraging their personal leadership style. They sometimes control their projects through influence.  The key to using this approach effectively is competence.  Competence does not necessarily mean knowing more than our team or client. How many times have we all felt that the specialists on the team know more than we do? It is not that they know more, they just know different things.

For a project manager, competence is about being able to successfully and effectively deliver on agreed upon objectives while maintaining a positive attitude within the project team. If you are able to demonstrate competence consistently, you will be on your way to developing a reputation of a great project manager and earning the trust of stakeholders and team members.  If people trust you, they are rather likely to imply you have an informal authority, which is perhaps more powerful than any formal kind.

Every project manager finds a unique way to be successful, whether through different combinations of the above mentioned approaches or by developing their own secret sauce. It is fairly certain that at some point in our careers we find ourselves wishing we had more authority to be able to resolve some situations. So please, do share your experiences with your colleagues. Maybe our gathered experiences and lessons learned will help us collectively better manage with limited authority to deliver project success.

Let’s start here. What successful ways have you discovered to manage with little authority?