Now is the time to think differently

Surviving and thriving in 2020 means designing and delivering projects in ingenious and productive ways. This means seeking out and welcoming many different perspectives. Now is not the time for complacency when it comes to diversity and inclusion, writes Emma De Vita.

Back in June, the founder of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, coined the term ‘The Great Reset’, urging us to rebuild societies, work, education and the economy in a better way. “One silver lining of the pandemic is that it has shown how quickly we can make radical changes to our lifestyles,” he wrote. “Almost instantly, the crisis forced businesses and individuals to abandon practices long claimed to be essential, from frequent air travel to working in an office.”

The appetite to rebuild business, work and projects in a better way must not be allowed to ebb away. It’s too easy to fall back into comfortable ways of doing things when uncertainty, fear and stress continue to wear away at us. The first half of 2020 has demonstrated that project professionals are adaptable and determined to succeed. The second half of this year should be dedicated to cementing new, better ways of working, and then building on this innovation.

This means capitalising on the best minds. But finding the best minds means casting your talent net more broadly. Cognitive diversity, as explained by Matthew Syed in his book Rebel Ideas: The Power of Diverse Thinking, pays. It gives you the creative solutions and finds the blindspots that groupthink never will. This is essential for any project.

Stop a backward slide

Stephen Frost, CEO of Frost Included, is a diversity and inclusion (D&I) expert who was D&I lead for the Cabinet Office and the 2012 London Olympics. He is co-author of Building an Inclusive Organisation. Now is a dangerous time for D&I progress, he says. Not only does fear lead us to hunker down and seek out the familiar, but home-working means that biases that might be challenged in the office go unchecked. Hard-won progress can slide backwards.

What’s more, Frost says that many project managers wrongly see D&I as a cost rather than an opportunity to shake things up to improve productivity, efficiency and service quality. “If you just stick to what you know, you are not going to have higher productivity,” he says. “The evidence suggests that if you have more diversity on your team, you will make more money.” But you need to have strong, inclusive leadership, he argues – someone who understands that a diversity of perspectives will de-risk situations, give new insights and uncover blindspots on projects.

“Team leaders and project managers are in a very powerful position to empower individuals,” says Frost. This is because they have more freedom than managers trapped in a corporate hierarchy. The way to embed D&I on a project is by viewing it as a method with a set of processes, he advises. For example, hiring a whole team in one go rather than individual by individual. If, as a white woman, you hire one person at a time, you’re likely to hire 10 white women. If you hire 10 people in one go, then you’ll be aware of what you’re doing.

PMs in a powerful position

“Project management gives you the opportunity to truly flex your resourcing model around the skills that you need for every stage of the project,” says Roianne Nedd, global inclusion and diversity lead at consultancy Oliver Wyman, whose career has spanned the public and private sectors, including working as a project manager for the Ministry of Justice. (She was a panellist on APM’s ‘Coming Back from COVID-19: How to accelerate recovery with diverse project teams’ webinar in May.) “So you’re more able to bring in diversity of thought, different skills and different people,” she says, although many project teams still fall into comfortable ways, hiring jacks of all trades and succumbing to bias, what they’ve historically done and the natural draw of working with people they like. “I think there is still a challenge of people not putting the needs of the project ahead of their comfort,” she says.

What’s really beneficial, she says, is to get to know your team members individually and understand what their strengths are and how they will fit into a project. If you manage a programme, you can create a diverse pool of talent to share across projects – something that Nedd has done and found to be an effective way of introducing more diversity. “We were still able to run a traditional payroll for an individual, but their time was split between different projects. Greater diversity was possible with a bit of thinking outside the box, collaboration across lines and leadership who are willing to take risks on something new.”

The pandemic has brought positives, like opening up our homes through video calls and forcing more one-to-one conversations that enable people to shine, Nedd believes. But it has also brought negatives. “We’ve seen gender progress dial back during the pandemic because of the return to more traditional gender roles, although women have always done that,” she says. “Some women are having to rethink their careers and even resign, because if having children at home becomes a long-term issue, it is just not a sustainable model.” The hope is that, with home-working, companies will move away from often excessive and exhausting presenteeism to a more outcomes-driven approach, which is characteristic of project work anyway.

What’s more, says Nedd, “We also have to think about where we are with race equity. The horrifying death of George Floyd has created more momentum around racial equity, how we think about that, and how we step back and make systematic change to confront the lack of visible ethnic diversity in many organisations. We are at a turning point.” What will D&I 2.0 look like? “It’s about accountability,” says Nedd, “enabling people to look at diversity as a business issue not just as a social issue. We need to apply our business frames to this challenge.”

In practical terms, explains Nedd, this means looking at your talent pipeline, rooting out bias in your recruitment, holding people accountable for their actions, doing analysis around decision-making and identifying when recruits are being left behind. “How do we now accelerate learning rather than making the same mistakes every time we reprioritise a different diversity issue? How do we use intersectionality to drive change as well?” ‘Women’, for example, are not just a homogenous group of white middle-class people.

The benefits of diversity to projects are highly desirable. “The biggest place where I believe diversity gives you an edge in project management is in your risk management phase,” Nedd explains. “It’s about identifying the random risk that might torpedo the whole project. You need different ways of thinking and looking at the world and different experiences to help you identify the things that could destroy your project or put it off track. And if you have people with the same background, who are trained in exactly the same way and have only ever worked on the same types of projects – while they might bring speed to some of that work, they are unlikely to identify that almost unquantifiable risk.”

Still on the agenda

Dee Tamlin is head of client and legal project management at global law firm Pinsent Masons, and was the founding co-chair of its LGBT network. “There was fear at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak that D&I would be forgotten about, and with some organisations it probably has gone down to the bottom of the agenda,” she says. Firms should act fast to deal with this. Tamlin says that she very quickly opened up team chats after the murder of George Floyd to talk about Black Lives Matter. “Let’s make it important to us. It’s about senior leaders reminding people that this is still on our agenda,” she says. This could be done via a weekly newsletter from leaders that includes talking heads from employees from minority groups. Pinsent Masons, for example, ran a comms campaign with talking heads from employees about why they were out and proud for Pride 2020.

“The reason why cognitive diversity is so important is because we have big problems that we have to solve now. What we want to do is bring people with different frames of reference into the problem-solving arena. It could be that the person who is the least experienced in project management might have the solution,” says Tamlin. “Every single person on the project team needs a voice, because it could be risk management that you are doing, and that small voice could be the voice that tells you that you are about to hit a massive risk and that might turn into a project issue.” As the project manager, you need to have ears wide open. “I have recruited 25 legal project managers over the past two years. When a new recruit starts, they are told that we want to set them up for success,” she explains.

What about calling out bad behaviour? “Whatever minority group you might be in, allies are absolutely critical. Our female network group has men. Our LGBT network group has many straight people. As a gay woman I’m not always going to be around or always call out something to do with LGBT things, but hopefully our allies will stand by us,” she says.

Inequality needs to be fixed

Anita Phagura is an experienced project manager, having worked in transport for eight years. A year ago, she set up Fierce Project Management, a community and consultancy which supports women in project management, and she is a committee member for APM’s Women in Project Management SIG. Phagura has been in a minority on project teams either by gender or ethnicity and has experienced subtle and not-so-subtle encounters with sexism and racism. She was also concerned that the higher she climbed in the project hierarchy, the fewer women she could see.

Phagura found her desire to continue to progress her project management career and have the flexibility to look after her young son very difficult, and things have only got worse during lockdown. The community of female project managers with whom she connects have reported an even more pressurised expectation for project teams to be ever-present for virtual meetings. “Men want flexibility too,” she says. “It opens up the talent pool to a whole wealth of people – disabled people, those with caring responsibilities or semi-retired people who want flexibility.”

The mission of Fierce Project Management is “to embed inclusivity in projects so that women and under-represented groups can get their voices heard, be taken seriously and access opportunities so projects are delivered better”, explains Phagura. “It’s not about changing the women – it’s the workplaces that need to be fixed. We need to rebuild the culture,” she says. She is optimistic. “As a project manager, there is no one way to be. The beauty of project management is that we can all shine and deliver our projects in different ways.

“I really feel that now is the biggest opportunity for change [on diversity] that we’ve ever had… we’ve been forced to do things in a different way. Forced into our own bubbles, we have been questioning our own values and seeing that we don’t all matter equally. Inequality is really being magnified. It’s even more apparent that inequality needs to be addressed.”

How to do D&I well

Jenny McLaughlin is a project manager at Heathrow, and lead for its disability network. Diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD, McLaughlin feels supported by a work culture that is at pains to foster inclusivity for those whose disabilities are visible or hidden.

For project managers working for organisations that are lagging behind in attitude but want to take action, she advises, “It’s about asking, ‘How can we incorporate D&I into project design principles?’” The best place to start, she says, is to understand the diversity you already have on your team, to treat people with respect and kindness and to make the team a psychologically safe place to be. “Unless everyone’s voice has equal value, then you won’t be able to improve the project.”

James Lea, a consulting project and programme manager and Fellow of APM, has a personal involvement with D&I. “I have always made it clear that I have a hearing loss, and have educated and informed those around me as to how we can adapt to what this means together,” he says by email.

Is now the right time for a greater diversity push? “Absolutely, we must keep pushing the boundaries, and a crisis is an opportunity. The pandemic has driven change further and faster than any coordinated business transformation programme. We must seize this initiative,” says Lea. “Technology is rising to the challenge but we’ve yet to understand what the new ways of working will look like. The more we can push, the stronger we’ll be when things settle down again.”

According to Lea, stubborn obstacles remain – the fear of failure in front of a client, for one. “Diverse teams have to experiment to achieve their best performance but are under pressure not to do so in front of the client, for fear of reputational damage,” he says. But the pandemic has given us the permission to change, he argues. Let’s push for that change right now. After all, why wouldn’t you?

Tips on how to affect change right now, by Roianne Nedd

1 Work out your blindspots

You need to build your self-awareness. Look at the past five projects you worked on. Who were the people you tended to bring on, or not, on your teams? Challenge yourself as to why that might be. An easy way is to ask your family – often, the people who are closest to you will know what your biases are.

2 Make yourself vulnerable

In order to attract different people towards you, you have to make yourself vulnerable to make them connect. It gives other people permission to be themselves as well. Project managers need to buy into you as their project leader. Project teams need to build connections fast, so you have to articulate your story as to what makes you a great project manager and leader.

3 Realise you don’t have to know the answers

The value of a project manager is knowing the strengths of each of their team members and using everyone’s capabilities to the fullest capacity.

APM’s Salary and Market Trends Survey 2020: diversity and inclusion

The project profession, like many other others, faces a challenge to increase the diversity of representation at all levels. There are encouraging signs though. APM’s latest Salary and Market Trends Survey reveals that over three-quarters of black, Asian and minority ethic (BAME) respondents feel positive about the future, while over a fifth of young professionals entering the profession are from a BAME background.

This year’s survey revealed that the profession broadly aligns with the UK’s overall ethnic makeup. Eighty-six per cent of project professionals are white – reflecting the broader national picture – with 12 per cent identifying as BAME. Of that group, Asian/Asian British – Indian respondents were the most numerous, at 27 per cent of the BAME total, followed by Black/African/Caribbean/Black British – African (19 per cent).

And as further evidence that the profession’s mix is changing, almost one in three project professionals from a BAME background (31 per cent) have joined the profession in the past two years, versus 19 per cent of their white counterparts. Nearly half of the profession’s BAME cohort are young: 15 per cent are aged 18 to 24, and 32 per cent are 25 to 34 (compared with 16 per cent aged between 45 and 54).

The way in which some project professionals of a BAME background perceive their own prospects for advancement makes for sobering reading. Most concerning is the fact that 28 per cent of BAME project professionals believe that their ethnicity has had a negative impact on their professional development (compared with 18 per cent who believe it has had a positive impact). Within the BAME cohort, Black/African/Caribbean/Black British respondents feel the most frustrated: they were the group most likely to say that their ethnicity has had a negative impact on their professional development (39 per cent). And it’s a concern to others: 26 per cent of British Asians felt the same way.

Seventy-six per cent of BAME respondents feel positive about the prospects for the profession, compared to 67 per cent of white respondents, yet the survey data suggests a difference of opinion on the ways to make the profession more diverse and inclusive.

Mentoring is the most widely suggested solution to improving D&I, with 43 per cent of both white and BAME respondents saying the use of an advice and guidance programme can effect real change. However, beyond that, the splits appear: 28 per cent of BAME respondents feel employers should consider changing their recruitment practices, while only 18 per cent of white respondents see that as a solution.

Significantly, a big discrepancy centres around the importance of diversity-related networks, with a growing number (35 per cent) of BAME respondents suggesting their use within organisations, and only 18 per cent of their white colleagues agreeing.

Read the full results of the research into D&I at bit.ly/2CrxYuy