Implications for project leaders
Projects often have a profound impact on the organization that receives
a project delivery. Such deliveries usually transform all or parts of the
receiving organization, and by their nature create changes to the individual
departments. Projects often involve the design and development
of new physical products or services that may contain complex technical
elements. The problem most common to projects is, unfortunately,
to concentrate and emphasize the technical content at the expense of
understanding its impact on the people and the organization. An important
characteristic of project work is the extent to which the people who
will use the product are invited to participate in the work. Very often the
work is done by a specialist without the co-operation, participation, or
commitment of the end-users.
Project leaders, as we have seen, must be able to interact with various
sub-cultural elements within their organization and that of the
customer. Leaders who are aware of cultural differences can avoid or minimize
unproductive conflicts and misunderstandings. Differences may
arise for various reasons – such as values, assumptions and beliefs – and
arise from problems of communicating across cultures. The nature of
communication in R&D is very different from the language spoken in
marketing, for example; it is important for the manager to make a concerted
effort to speak and listen in ways that take these differences into
account. Attributing project barriers to another co-worker’s inflexibility
or stubbornness may polarize differences, escalate conflict and make it
very difficult, or next to impossible, to complete the project.
Projects have a higher probability of succeeding when they:
• Start with the premise that organizations are living social systems
• Assess, identify, work with and align with the organization’s core
culture
• Are designed on the front end from a system-focused perspective and
implemented in a manner congruent with that design
• Are clearly tied to the organization’s strategy
• Are aligned with strategy, culture and management
• Understand that all organizations have a lead core culture and subcultures
and that the project culture must function in the service of
them
• Take seriously the individual differences among the team members –
i.e. their individual and therefore unique worldviews and situations,
which reflect on and limit all aspects of their behaviour.
To sum up, the concepts of project and organizational cultures can
help to understand how projects really work. Culture – as team members
understand it – can be thought of as the ‘personality’ of the project that
defines the way it is implemented. Culture is therefore the key ingredient
of a project’s success. The cultures of each project and organization tend
to have distinctive properties that make them unique.