Adapt and pivot!

Lisa Pattenden has been spending a lot of time indoors lately when we speak in April. She’s slowly mastering the art of working from home – set up by the window in her living room, with an open door letting in air from a Juliet balcony. On calls she’s quick to apologise for the rumble of Chinook helicopters arriving at the NHS Nightingale hospital built at London’s ExCel convention centre, opposite to her flat.

Pattenden wears several hats. As well as having volunteered to deliver hot meals to NHS Nightingale staff, she’s on contract through Atkins as a programme manager for quality and transportation strategy at HS2, in charge of the logistics of the traffic involved in the rail construction. She’s also, like many project managers during the COVID-19 pandemic, being tasked to deliver complex projects smoothly in a world flipped upside down.

In mid-April the government gave HS2 the nod to proceed, despite the country being deep into lockdown. “That meant a whole other level of construction for us,” she says. “So there’s the dynamic of managing that from home. I was like: ‘Right, how are we doing this?’” That’s a question that will surely resonate among readers right now. Around the world, project managers are implementing new systems and working patterns for projects that are pivoting and shifting more wildly than ever – and it’s all being carried out from improvised offices in spare rooms.

A place to hide

Pattenden’s work hinges on ensuring hundreds of critical tasks are being handled to plan. Her biggest challenge has been to ensure the same level of accountability she could expect in the good old days of working face-to-face. “It was really great when we were in the office because I could track people down and they couldn’t hide from me,” she says. “Now they can.” This transition to remote project management may feel very familiar. Productivity trackers used to be a handy tool; now they’re an absolute staple for the team, generating regular status reports and graphs that show deliverables at a glance. Collaborative spreadsheets are now a must. And the only sight of her colleagues comes through a window on Microsoft Teams.

Fluid situation

Some organisations were already well equipped to make this kind of switch. At the NHS’s Health Education England, for example, corporate portfolio manager Jo Stanford relates how valuable it was to have virtual 3D workspaces in place before the virus took hold. “It’s a bit like the advice you get on a plane to put your own mask on before helping with someone else’s,” she says. “We could provide support to the key programmes that were being affected, and do coaching and workshopping for others.”

Yet many companies are so used to working face-to-face that they have had to scramble to get live collaboration tools up and running. Prior to the pandemic, Hannah Gledhill, project management office lead at chocolate maker Hotel Chocolat, couldn’t have imagined developing new products without gathering round a table to taste chocolate samples and handle prototypes for packaging. She concedes that moving her team over to sharing live documents online has been a challenge. But she’s also found herself struggling with something bigger.

“As a project manager, I inherently like to be able to control things,” she says, on the phone from her makeshift upstairs office. “This situation is so fluid; it’s almost a full-time project management job trying to keep the line-up of different projects accurate across the business. The suppliers for a product are open one day, the next day closed, then they’re open again. Before this, you just took it for granted that you could produce a product and your factory wouldn’t shut down.”

As Gledhill suggests, the unique impact of the pandemic has left project managers facing new, unfamiliar hurdles. But some are suddenly working on completely unfamiliar projects too. And even when these pivots are critical for the public health effort, they can easily create extra stresses of their own.

Surface Technology International (STI) is one of many companies around the UK that has pivoted its production to support the NHS – in this case, handling the production and testing of ventilators for Ventilator Challenge, the high-profile consortium of manufacturers that includes McLaren and Rolls-Royce.

Radical pivot

STI is aiming to produce 15,000 ventilators in five weeks. Each ventilator has around 600 components. So that’s close to nine million parts in total, for a product it had never made before. The team has had to dismantle and relocate its facilities to cope with the new production flow, and its supply chain has buckled under the demands of the radical pivot.

“A number of new suppliers have been brought on board,” says Jon Ashford, project engineering manager at STI. “With that comes requirements for quality assurance and material dependability. It’s taken a couple of weeks for materials to start to flow into STI, and there are a number of small issues cropping up that are causing production to stop and material to be put into quarantine.”

The team is, of course, well aware of the value and importance of its task. One colleague has even spent several weeks in hospital with the virus on a ventilator. The subsequent sense of purpose can serve to amplify frustrations when the wheels fall off the process. “It’s about trying to find the right ways to discuss it with the production team,” says Ashford, “so they don’t automatically take a hit and think: ‘Oh, we’re just starting and stopping again.’”

Gledhill and Ashford have both taken a similar approach in keeping morale up. Communication is regular, open and honest. Progress is clearly documented, with very obvious targets set, met and celebrated. Catch-ups are shorter but more frequent. And live documents are kept accurate and accessible to everyone – to help people who are working odd hours around childcare commitments.

Cutting people some slack

Carol McGovern is project manager at medical software company Clevermed. Prior to COVID-19, Clevermed was busy scaling up its BadgerNet maternity platform. But as the pandemic spread, its customers – pregnant women – were suddenly some of the most at risk. Thanks to the efforts of the company’s software engineers, it was able to quickly roll out nationwide upgrades to the platform to build in coronavirus-specific triage questions, as well as push notifications containing the latest guidance for pregnant women.

Yet some of those engineers have struggled with the structure and rigour of working from the kitchen, day after day. McGovern’s own work experience has helped her be more empathetic towards her team’s changing needs. “We need to cut people a lot of slack,” says McGovern. “We all want to see projects go live, obviously, but unless the deadline is life or death, it’s best not to harass people. Six weeks ago I’d have said: ‘Where are we at with that?’ or ‘That’s failed. OK, how do we fix it?’ Now it’s more a case of: ‘What can I do to help?’”

That’s a question that’s going to resonate for some time yet. As well as the considerable immediate project management challenge of moving to remote working, and keeping projects on track as the pandemic plays out, there are other issues for project managers to juggle. Like what happens next. The working world is moving as one into a massive unknown. And this throws a huge question mark over project managers’ ability to see where their organisations and the wider working world are going. Let alone how best to navigate there.

At Health Education England, Stanford’s primary role is to head up the corporate portfolio office, which recruits and manages the workforce supply coming into the NHS. She explains how, beyond the immediate emergency response, the organisation is starting to plan for the post-coronavirus future. This includes harnessing positives that have emerged in the crisis.

“They say necessity is the mother of invention, and COVID-19 has pushed some real innovation and change to the fore,” she says. “NHS Digital’s virtual GP consultation programme was averaging around 300 virtual sessions a month prior to this year. But in March alone there were something like 600,000. Circumstances have advanced that agenda – and it won’t go back to how it was before. Some of our work will be around looking at those opportunities.”

As for how she’ll approach that work, Stanford credits the research of Stephen Carver, Cranfield University’s change and crisis management expert, who argues that the more complex the organisational change, the less success hinges on processes and structures.

“How we’re reacting and responding to each other as humans is an incredibly important part of our planning,” says Stanford. “A lot of people are frightened by the virus. Others will be in denial. So it’s about how we take them out of anxiety and over to acceptance. It’s about providing assurance that, although there are some bad things going on, some of the things we need in order to have a productive and effective future aren’t scary in themselves. They’re just things we need to learn how to do differently.”

Camaraderie and empathy

Back at her flat opposite the ExCel, Pattenden is reflective. For her, the pandemic hasn’t merely transformed her experience of work, it has also transmitted a healthy personal reminder that project managers are people with lives outside of work. “I didn’t know people’s home lives when we worked in the office,” says Pattenden. “Now I can understand the challenge of the marriage, the kids, the barking dog. And that has built camaraderie and empathy. Now we know what’s going on with each other, I won’t be so firm with that person. We can help each other out.”

Tips for project managing in a crisis

Know your systems

Even if you didn’t have remote collaboration software in place before this crisis, you’ll need it for the next one. Set up a consistent suite of tools for everyone to use, and make sure shared documents are accurate and accessible to everyone, wherever they are.

Be open with suppliers and customers

A crisis will play havoc with your regular supply chain and distribution, none of which will be within your control. But you can dictate how you communicate the situation to stakeholders.

Start looking forward

We don’t know what the future of work will look like, but things won’t be the same after this. So carve out space to pause and reflect on lessons already learned and how this can serve you in what comes next.

Bring people with you

The more complex the organisational change, the more that human element comes to the fore. Be open, honest and visible.

Remember to cut your team some slack

When asking your team to go above and beyond their usual role, understand that they may have to put other things ahead of the job. And remember to schedule catch-ups that aren’t about work, but just sharing a moment – as people.

Available now: The APM Podcast

The newly launched APM Podcast takes a deep dive into the COVID-19 pandemic in its first few episodes. The ‘Crisis Talks’ series includes interviews with project managers who are delivering against a backdrop of severe disruption. Listen along as practitioners from the project community share their stories of grappling with the new normal.

Visit apmpodcast.podbean.com or search ‘APM Podcast’ on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.