Ever wonder why some of your organisation’s projects did not work out as well as you expected, despite the fact that your project team followed the accepted principles and practices of project management?

You may find the answer in a new global Competency Standard for  Complex Project Managers that was launched at the recent ProMAC (international project management) conference in Sydney in September 2006.

I presented a paper on organisational transformation and cultural change projects at the ProMAC conference. Organisational transformation and cultural change initiatives respond poorly to what might be called the ‘traditional’ project management methodologies, and must, in my experience, be implemented with a more dynamic approach and a different way of thinking and perceiving

So it was of great interest to hear of how some of the speakers such as Dr David Dombkins, Kim Gillis and Ids Groenhout, together with other leading project managers who together have worked on some of the most difficult (and also most interesting) projects around the world, have defined the competencies that enable highly complex projects to be delivered successfully.

What I particularly like about their approach is that the people who have defined the Complex Project competencies are also the people who are delivering results on those projects.

They have, at least partially, modelled their own successful way of doing things, so that the competencies are based on the actual factors for success in complex project management.

Those competencies will inevitably spill over into traditional project management practices, and will gain traction by virtue of their being the future standard required by major government and commercial organisations, such as military and resources organisations. The (Australian) Department of Defence holds the copyright to the Competencies, so any party dealing with the Department of Defence should study the competencies closely.

Global shortage of Complex Project Managers The need for a new competency standard for Complex Projects is driven by the crucial need to develop many more project managers capable of delivering on complex projects.

At the moment there is a critical worldwide shortfall of between 80% and 90% in the availability of Complex Project Managers. In other words, there are only 10% – 20% of the number of project managers needed to successfully handle the world’s complex projects. So there are great opportunities for those with the will to pursue a place in the profession of Complex Project Manager.

The intention of the authors of the Complex Projects Competency Standard is to create a specialist profession of Complex Project Managers, akin to other specialised professions such as barristers and surgeons.

The peak body for the profession is the College of Complex Project Managers. The initial Fellows of the College will be the eleven experienced project managers who authored the competencies, and who will be the ‘gatekeepers’ for admission to the profession, sitting as members of credentialling panels in assessing future Members and Fellows of the College.

What are Complex Projects? Complex projects include projects such as

• international aid
• defence systems
• aerospace projects
• climate change
• disaster relief
• mergers
• policy implementation
• pandemics
• national development
• change in organisations.

They have the potential to provide massive benefits, if they are delivered successfully. On the other hand, if they are not delivered successfully, they can be a huge black hole for money, effort and outcomes.

The difference is in the way they are implemented.

Complex Projects are, according to the Standard, ‘characterised by a degree of disorder, instability, emergence, non-linearity, recursiveness, uncertainty, irregularity and randomness and dynamic complexity where the parts in a system can react/interact with each other in different ways…a dynamic system that is to a large degree unknowable…Detailed long-term planning is therefore impossible…The strategy is outcomes-based, emergent and requiring constant re-negotiation… [They] are not just ‘complex adaptive systems’, but rather ‘complex evolving systems’.

As such, they require ‘a very different approach and a completely different mindset from [traditional] project managers in delivering successful project outcomes’.

That different approach and mindset are outlined in

• nine ‘new’ competencies (or ‘Views’) and
• an additional set of Key Attributes required by successful complex project managers.

The Views are broken down into more specific Elements and the Elements are reduced further to various (several hundred) Actions in Workplace. For instance:

View 3 is Change & Journey.

One of the eleven Elements of that View is Pilot Projects – symbolism and the management of meaning.

One of the seven Actions in Workplace associated with that Element is Searches out opportunities that link project values to outcomes to create new symbols of behaviour. Another is Uses the creation of myths as a key tool in cultural change.

In addition, Evidence Guides are provided for each Element. In the case of the example in the previous paragraph, one of the items in the Evidence Guide is Communication process deliberately creates symbols and myths.

From my perspective as a person engaged in organisational change and transformation, the Complex Project competencies capture many of the actions and processes that enable change to be effected successfully.

Of particular value is the section called ‘Special Attributes’ (of a Complex Project Manager), which is part 10 of the competencies. The Special Attributes are the crucial personal attributes and states of awareness that underpin the Actions.

The Special Attributes are categorised under five Elements: ·

• Wisdom
• Action and Outcome Oriented
• Creates and Leads Innovative Teams
• Focused and Courageous
• Ability to Influence.

More specific attributes of Complex Project Managers are ascribed to each Element of the Special Attributes. Some of those attributes are descriptive of finely-tuned internal processes which differentiate excellence from average performance.

For example, one of the attributes under Action and Outcome Oriented is the subtle process described as: Is perceptive to very faint signals that everything is not right before it is visible to others, and takes action.

In my view, the Special Attributes section is the single most important section of the competencies. Without those attributes, the other 9 Views and their respective Elements and Actions are less likely to succeed.

Key to success of the Competency Standard: The Complex Project competencies are based on the experience of eleven very experienced project managers (the Fellows of the College of Complex Project Managers) who between them have managed major infrastructure, defence, engineering, aerospace, resources, IT, technology, change and social projects around the world.

The competencies are, by definition, general descriptions of what those Fellows do, and how they do it.

The measure of success for the Standard will be to develop the other 80% – 90% of Complex Project Managers that are urgently needed around the world.

The key to doing that is to elicit the know-how of the eleven Fellows to a greater depth.

Each Fellow has a depth of knowledge and skill that can be captured and modelled. Their knowledge and skills are invaluable resources that can be used to fast-track the development of the required Complex Project Managers.

The models that are developed from that process can be used as a basis for designing the necessary learning activities that transfer the knowledge and skills. For instance, how do the Fellows ‘search out opportunities that link project values to outcomes to create new symbols of behaviour’? How do they ‘use the creation of myths as a key tool in cultural change’?

As they are successful in the way they do those things, and they do it in a different way to traditional project management, it is essential that those ways be identified and added to the repertoire of behaviours that up-coming Complex Project Managers can learn.

Some of the subtler Actions described in the Competencies have a high dependence on the Fellows’ ability to process information/data internally. But even those subtler processes can be modelled, e.g.: How do the Fellows perceive very faint signals that everything is not right before it is visible to others?

Those subtler aspects have little meaning (other than conceptually) to anyone who has not experienced them, and they need to be identified, because they are crucial to being able to adapt rapidly to a dynamic, evolving situation.

Even people who have experienced them often have difficulty describing the specific internal processes they use to, e.g.

• notice the very faint signals,
• make meaning out of what are often seemingly unconnected data, 
• notice any mismatch between desired outcomes and the meaning of the signals.

From the perspective of the upcoming Complex Project Managers, the question is: how do I notice the faint perceptions; how do I create meaning out of unrelated data: what do I do with my awareness to notice the mismatch?

The specific way that one person develops and applies, e.g., increased perceptivity to faint signals, may well differ from how another person does so.

But there will be common factors. For instance, the model for ‘noticing very faint signals’, is likely to include being able to:

• stop the chatter of the mind,
• suspend judgements and assumptions,
• stay present in the moment,
• scan for the very slight signals ( data, thoughts and feelings ) that may make a + or – difference to the success of the project, in any combination that may not yet have been noticed,

each of which can be developed/learned.

That depth of process makes all the difference when transferring high level skills and awareness.

Once learned, those processes of awareness can be replicated, adapted and executed to different situations with little effort.

I have no doubt that the Fellows of the College of Complex Project Managers are a rich source of many rich stories that would be of tremendous benefit to up-coming Complex Project Managers and which would considerably accelerate the learning process.

The Learning Organisation and performance improvement: You may have noticed a connection between the modelling process described above and the way that knowledge, know-how, experience and skills can be captured and replicated throughout an organisation, in any function (not just project management), instead of being lost in the busy-ness of business.

In the meantime, those readers who have a copy of my book Powerful Questions That Every Director, Executive & Manager Must Ask can glean an idea of how the modelling process works in Chapter 3: Identifying a Process, Strategy or Model. That chapter outlines the basic technique, though what I’ve suggested above for modelling the Fellows entails a higher level of skill and more depth.

If you have a copy of the recent (June 2006) Australian Institute of Management book DNA @ Work, to which I contributed a chapter, you will have read Ned’s story (pp. 232 – 237), which arose from a change workshop I was facilitating for a large organisational cultural change initiative, and which illustrates some of the Actions in Workplace referred to above: identifying and using an opportunity to link project values to outcomes to create new symbols of behaviour; using the creation of myths and legends as a key tool in cultural change; and using the communication process to deliberately create symbols and myths.

That story provides some of the ‘process’ that is so important to transferring learning and meaning in a cultural change initiative.

Ned’s story also illustrates several other attributes listed in the Special Attributes section of the Complex Project Management Competencies, and how those attributescan occur in small actions in combination to provide an excellent outcome:

• remaining focused regardless of setbacks
• willingness to take calculated risks
• taking the hard decisions
• turning threats into opportunities
• being visible and leading from the front, while delegating
• having a long term perspective
• being assertive and using situational leadership;
• defending your position and trusting your judgment on matters of importance
• asking probing questions to get to the root cause of a situation or problem
• being politically astute
• creating strong team identification.

by Christo Norden-Powers Copyright © 2007 Spandah Pty Ltd