Can project managers break through to the boardroom?

Andrew Saunders investigates whether the C-suite is ready to add a chief project officer to its ranks. He finds that the executive board is still a little out of reach, but a nudge in the right direction to bring CEOs and project managers closer together is all that it might take...

Along with all the undoubted trials, tribulations and tragedies that have accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic, there have also been a few notable triumphs. It’s presented a tremendous opportunity for organisations to step up and really show what they can do, managing huge amounts of change against very tight time scales and with stakes that in some cases could hardly be higher.

Nightingale hospitals constructed from scratch in weeks. Supermarkets maintaining vital food and grocery supplies through a lockdown demand spike equivalent to Christmas that materialised overnight. Companies up and down the country having to pivot in days towards new and untried products and services – garment manufacturers sewing PPE, distillers bottling hand sanitiser rather than gin, SMEs without even a website switching to e-commerce – simply to stay afloat.

All these and more have been making headlines since lockdown began in March, and none of them could have been achieved as quickly or effectively without project managers in the vanguard, helping to impose at least a semblance of order on what might otherwise have been chaos, and saving lives, jobs and businesses into the bargain.

No longer the techie geeks

“I think people have tended to see project managers as techie geeks in the basement who were great with a Gantt chart, but that’s all,” says Tim Banfield, consultant at the Nichols Group and former director of portfolio oversight at the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority. “Now [thanks to COVID-19] what we’re seeing is that, if you want to do something radically different in a short space of time, you have to use those project techniques. It’s not just about ‘A leads to B leads to C’, because when you get to B suddenly you are diverted to D and you need to be able to respond.”

Darren Dalcher, professor of strategic project management at Lancaster University, adds that the urgency of the crisis has created a rare chance for project managers to make their presence felt in boardroom decision-making – to demonstrate to a sometimes-sceptical C-suite audience that they can master not only the traditional ‘whats’ of budget, scope and time scale, but also the ‘whys’ of strategy and vision. “If you’re asked to deliver the pizza, that’s all you can do. But the bigger conversation is about redesigning the entire restaurant. I think that’s the opportunity here – there has been much less time than there usually is, so the traditional way of thinking about projects has had to be upended. It’s about recognising the constraints that are not necessary and responding in a more adaptive way.”

So, is the traditional, rigid distinction between strategy and execution – the former a board-level priority, the latter less so – finally being superseded by a new golden age of project manager and C-suite collaboration? Perhaps, says Dalcher, but there is still a long way to go. “The problem is that there is a serious disconnect between strategic management and project management. A lot of projects fail because the execution people don’t understand the strategic needs. And a lot of strategies fail because there is no understanding of the implementation issues.”

It’s strategic, not tactical

The view that the C-suite regards project management as tactical rather than strategic is a common one. It’s an entrenched position that harks back to the very beginnings of the profession, first in the military and then in the space and nuclear industries – typically high-stakes games where project managers became the people tasked with making sure things were done right first time, but only after the higher ranks had decided what the right thing to do was.

“It was all very process-focused – here is the manual, we’ll deliver it just like it says in chapter three,” says Sue Kershaw, managing director of transportation at Costain Group and president of APM. But – rather like the pre-internet days where the IT director was often viewed as a computer geek, a kind of glorified plumber who simply made things work properly – it’s a dangerously old-fashioned view of project managers that no longer stands up to scrutiny.

“It comes from a place of deep ignorance. We do major projects really well in this country, because we’ve added a vital intellectual layer – why are we doing this? What’s the business case? What are the socio-economic benefits? Look at all the analysis that has been done around HS2, for example. You can’t do that kind of analysis without thinkers,” says Kershaw.

She may have a point – even the prime minister’s chief adviser Dominic Cummings appreciates that project skills these days are about more than the old trinity of budget, scope and schedule. In his famous blog post at the beginning of the year, Cummings included project managers alongside data scientists, policy experts and other “assorted weirdos and misfits” whom he wants in Downing Street to help him think the unthinkable.

Business as a suite of projects

But the image formed by those early process-led days still hampers efforts by the most business-minded of project people to be taken seriously at board level, says Kershaw. “We need to educate CEOs and CFOs in particular. They think, ‘We’re on the board, so we only think about corporate things – and projects aren’t corporate’. I’m sorry, but your whole business is a suite of projects that between them bring in your revenue. Why aren’t you looking after them like you look after HR or legal? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Small businesses, too, often make the mistake of assuming that project management – and project managers in particular – are a luxury they cannot afford. But it doesn’t have to be a major overhead: even the simple project disciplines of documenting what they want to achieve, by when and at what cost can be hugely beneficial, says Tony Mulvahil of SME specialist Planning for the Best, who contributed to APM’s recent Golden Thread research. “Many SMEs take the view that red tape is bad, and that anything to do with documentation is red tape and also bad. They don’t always think about the structure they need to support their staff. But you don’t have to write a 60-page thesis – it could just be three paragraphs, thinking about things that could affect you and how you might react to them, so you aren’t just making things up as you go along.”

Speak the right language

It’s too easy just to blame the bosses, however. Boardroom access is jealously guarded and project people have to earn their place by confounding the stereotype, proving they can take a wider and more balanced view of business priorities and express themselves in board-friendly terms. “Project managers don’t always do themselves many favours – my view is that when they do get a chance to engage with the board, they mostly get it wrong, because they immediately start talking in project delivery language, which turns the C-suite off straight away,” says Martin Samphire, managing director of consultancy 3pmxl and chairman of the APM Governance SIG.

“There is a language issue between project people and the board in general – they fail to understand each other’s context and a lot is lost in translation. There is too much focus from the project team on what a project is trying to deliver as a product, and not enough on what it is trying to achieve as a business outcome, its contribution to meeting strategic objectives and the impact of any changes to the business benefits,” he adds.

The big I am

Kershaw agrees, adding that project managers also need to get better at marketing themselves to senior management if the profession is to stand a chance of becoming a recognised route to the top, alongside old favourites like sales and finance, and more recent additions like technology. “Project managers tend to hide themselves under a bushel – I had to go looking for mine. There was a community of 350 of them ferreting away, but they wouldn’t step forward. Doing the ‘big I am’ just isn’t in their DNA.”

One positive indicator that the profession might be able to make the most of its current hour in the spotlight is the gradual emergence of the CPO – chief portfolio officer. High-profile appointments such as Caroline Botwood at the Department for Transport are beginning to spread the good news about project skills to boardrooms across the wider industry. It’s a trend that the challenges of the post-COVID-19 environment may help to accelerate, says Banfield. “We’ve got some amazing people doing phenomenal things, but as a relatively young profession it takes a while to get a grip. It [the appointment of CPOs] sends a sign that they are being valued at board level.

“The best people in the profession are all people who don’t just have technical skills; they have empathy and leadership ability, they are comfortable with ambiguity and they can deliver huge change. As a profession we will be achieving our maximum potential value when project and programme people come to be seen as natural CEOs.”

If that ambition still seems a good way off, perhaps the achievements of the past few months across the commercial, public and government sectors have managed to bring it closer than it would otherwise have been. After all, as every good project manager knows, where there is a will there is a way.

Why it pays to have a good relationship with the boss

As Kevin Parry discovered back in 2014, there is nothing like having built a strong relationship with the CEO when an unexpected crisis hits. An experienced project director – he had previously been a programme director for BT’s multi-billion pound 21st Century Network upgrade project – Parry had been called in by a major airline’s cargo division to project manage the operational testing of a new automated international cargo hub that would handle all its lucrative air freight business.

He worked unusually closely with the division’s CEO on a key report to justify the full operational readiness of the complex, high-tech facility, and was rewarded by being asked to present it himself. “Considering that I was reporting to someone who reported to him, we built a pretty strong relationship. I worked very much one-to-one with the CEO on the report, and I was then asked to come along with him and present it to the board.”

However, within a couple of weeks of opening, it quickly became apparent that things were not as they should have been. The terminal had developed a significant cargo backlog – instead of being processed within 24 hours, cargo and paperwork were piling up all over the terminal. Costs and delays were mounting fast. “It was a real crisis,” Parry says.

Parry, fearing his neck was on the line, was instead given another chance. “The CEO called me back and said: ‘You had better write a briefing for the board on why we were right to open in the first place.’ It’s not the way some CEOs would have reacted – I could have been fired on the spot.”

He soon discovered that the terminal was not being run according to plan. Rather than trusting the computer to ‘fly’ the terminal like an autopilot flies a plane, the operators were constantly making manual adjustments, trying to second guess its decisions. “They were over-riding the computer and becoming overwhelmed as a result. That terminal was a three-dimensional chess game and no one could comprehend all its moving parts.”

His 10-stage plan to fix the problems worked. But it could all have ended very differently. “Although my knowledge of that terminal was pretty good, the CEO showed a phenomenal amount of trust in me by putting me in front of the board and backing me as his man. But I think he had confidence in my ability, and I had confidence that he would support me too.”

The incident stands out in Parry’s mind as a great example of the value that can – but rarely does – accrue to a business when senior project people and the C-suite work closely together. “It’s still the exception rather than the rule that we are treated as professionals by the board,” he says. “The CEO gave me guidance and access and helped me to present my report at a sufficiently high level so the board could comprehend it. It was a great relationship.”

How to speak board

Be a leader, not just an expert
Your technical skills got you into the room, but they won’t get you much further on their own. Show them that you understand how to contribute to strategic priorities, and give them confidence that you have the leadership ability to see that contribution through.

Less raw data, more derived insight
You might think that citing loads of portfolio facts and figures shows you are really on top of your game. But the board is much more interested in actionable insight derived from data than in the raw data itself. So choose carefully – data by the teaspoon, insight by the bucket-load.

Be strategic not tactical
Focus more on outcomes, business value and behavioural changes and less on budgets, scope and schedule.

Avoid the ‘P’ words
That means process and project. Rightly or wrongly, most boards consider these topics well beneath their pay grade. Talk about either and you will not only lose the room, but also your chance of a return visit.

Look forward, not back
The board wants proof that you have a strong vision for the future, one that is complementary to their own. They are much less interested in your ability to cleverly rationalise the past – so talk to tomorrow not yesterday, and avoid justifying past actions or mistakes.