Co-author Alfonso Bucero (left) poses with contributor Dr. J. Davidson Frame at the PMI Global Congress 2006 Seattle bookstore.

Randall Englund's work was quoted in the following publications:

"David Gill provides a compelling and insightful manifesto linking ethics to healthy, excellent organizations.  He doesn't just preach at us about what to do but also provides why and how to implement an ethics program--a program that weaves throughout an organization and guides people to achieve more than what they may have thought possible, in ways consistent with innate desires for fairness.  It's About Excellence helps us see the power of authenticity and integrity."

    --Randall L. Englund, Englund Project Management Consultancy; author, Creating an Environment for Successful Projects (www.englundpmc.com)

quoted in "Advance Praise" for It's About Excellence:  Building Ethically Healthy Organizations by David W. Gill, Executive Excellence Publishing, 2008.

Reaching out to senior management may mean brushing up on those political skills--to a certain extent.

"Be neither a political shark nor naive, but become politically sensitive," says Randall Englund, Englund Project Management Consultancy.

"Since power is the ability to get work done and project management is about getting work done, project managers need power, " he says.  "The application of power is what politics is all about."

If it is serious, make yourself heard.  "The last thing we want to do is set ourselves up for failure because we failed to speak up," says Randall Englund, Englund Project Management Consultancy.  "Our work as project managers will go unnoticed and unappreciated unless we first believe in the project management discipline ourselves and seek its rightful place in the organization."

Simon Kent, "Does somebody up there like me?"  PM Network magazine, June 2007, pp. 42-48

Getting results through power    

One of my issues with the PM Network magazine distributed by the Project Management Institute to all its members is that the stories provide only high level soundbites, failing to provide enough meaningful content about why, what, and how to implement project management.  Let me tell you the rest of the story behind quotes attributed to me in “Does Somebody Up There Like Me?” in the June 2007 issue.

One project I worked on did not go very well.  The senior manager insisted upon a certain format.  Several of us on the team decided that would not work so we implemented a productivity tool with a conscious intent not to inform the manager.  He became livid when he finally discovered what we were doing.   The resolution to this unproductive environment was for most of us on the team to leave that group.  The manager was not tolerant of other approaches, and we were not skilled enough at that time to work through the differences.

A better outcome may have been possible if we had characterized the senior manager’s style, researched the political implications of how he operated and what would be at stake if he appeared not to be in control, and collectively discussed changes in language that appealed to his operating style.  We also could have received advice from the manager’s manager about how to work with this manager.  We got that advice retrospectively, when it was too late.  He was very willing to advise us, but we had to ask. 

This example highlights the importance of stakeholder analysis to the politics of project management.  Since power is the ability to get work done, and project management is about getting work done, project managers need power.  The application of power is what politics is all about.  Very little position power accrues to most project managers, and you will get immersed in some level of politics in every organization, wherever you do projects that impact others.

Be neither a political shark nor naïve, but become politically sensitive.  A key to success is to understand these dynamics and to skillfully apply tools of the project management discipline, meshed with relationship building and constant communications.  My colleague Alfonso Bucero refers to passion, persistence, and patience as the three P’s necessary to be a successful project manager in political environments.  I agree wholeheartedly.  The last thing we want to do is set ourselves up for failure because we failed to speak up.

Our work as project managers will go unnoticed and unappreciated unless we first believe in the project management discipline ourselves and seek its rightful place in the organization.  I believe we were right in our approach to the project in the story above, but that was not enough.  We also needed to put effort into developing skills to understand, educate, and inform the senior manager about the project management processes we were using.  We also have to be flexible, see the big picture, build a coalition of guiding supporters, and constantly demonstrate the means to achieve success in fulfilling organizational goals.

Randy Englund, www.englundpmc.com   [blog posted at www.svprojectmanagement.net]

In a PMI presentation on political skills a few years ago, Randall Englund remarked that boundaries are in our minds, only: any photo of Earth from space proves that. So stop thinking of the organization as an org chart with hard and fast barriers and think of it as a hive, a tribe, some other organic metaphor. When project managers in the PMO, whether it is in IT or some other function, “act as if” they have a role on the strategic level of the enterprise … that role often develops. The proverb says, "when the student is ready, the teacher will appear." Likewise, when the practitioner is ready, often the expanded role opens up. Are you ready?

Personal Best #67
From e-Advisor Issue #102

 

The Stealth EPMO: Today IT, Tomorrow the Enterprise
by Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin, CBP Editor-in-Chief

You can indeed start a project management initiative by simply sending a few engineers out for training and having them come back excited and eager to try out some of the things they were exposed to. But, if the organization is unprepared to cooperate, then trying to apply the practices they bring back with them will be frustrating and discouraging. See "A Scenario" starting on page 2 of Graham and Englund, Creating an Environment for Successful Projects for a compelling example. Keep going into the next section on management "authenticity" and "integrity" and the book will hook you!

    Contributed by Warren Craycroft, ProjectConnections staff

In a recent interview for the Best Practices Report’s biannual supplement, the Executive Briefing, Englund surprised me by admitting he didn’t really know what the optimum design for a project organization might be. Despite a distinguished career and a groundbreaking book on the subject (he’s a former project manager at Hewlett-Packard Company in the Project Management Initiative, and co-author, with Robert J. Graham, of Creating an Environment for Successful Projects: The Quest to Manage Project Managers), he said he was “still looking” for the answer.

In the meantime, he said, “I always have hope.”

According to Englund, hope IS a strategy—and maybe the only one that makes sense. As he expresses it, an organization … a project, a company, a city, a society, even a global community … is more in tune with chaos theory than with the tenets of management. “In any living system,” he says, “there are all these little interactions going on all the time. You don’t know which ones will lead to a fruitful final result. That’s our salvation, the answer to our problems, but you don’t know which communications, which relationships, which seemingly random or coincidental events will produce it, so you just have to keep these actions going.” . . .

Maybe, through the lens of hindsight, I am reading things into the words Randy Englund shared with me back in July. “People get things done,” he said, “IN SPITE OF organizations …  org structure is not as important as getting the roles clear and clearing up the personal relationships between people who perform those roles.”

He noted that this is what Peter Senge’s “garden” approach is really about: You don’t command the plant to grow; you give it the environment and it will do what it is naturally supposed to do. “With organizational change, all you can do is start with the people closest to the action, and give them what they need to work with. Plant the seed and let it grow. Hopefully, people will start to think in new ways.”

        Personal Best #18
        From e-Advisor Issue #24  September 27, 2001
       by Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin, Editor-in-Chief
       Center for Business Practices

"A slowing global economy has multinational companies reassessing business priorities, and this should bode well for PM in the long run, according to consultant Randy Englund, Burlingame, Calif. USA, who co-authored Creating an Environment for Successful Projects:  The Quest to Mange Project Manage Project Management [Jossey-Bass, 1997]. "Everyone is cutting back on spending, but the need for PM is not less--it's more,"he says.  "Reducing PM would be cutting back on the very thing that could help pull a company together and position it when spending picks up.  PM enables companies to get projects out faster."

Ross Foti, "Forecasting the Future of Project Management" PM Network. October 2001.

"What is needed is a truly holistic corporate approach as we embark into the new millennium, involving a profound change in outlook in how business is run.... A good first start in knowing how best to go about this is to read the book, "Creating an Environment for Successful Projects," by Robert Graham and Randall Englund. I had the privilege of chairing a presentation by the authors at the PMI ’98 Symposium at Long Beach. Little did I know then that I would be using the book at a seminar I will facilitate called 'Project Management for Executives.' I’ve read it twice and scanned through it several times...

"

Dave Jacob, "The President's Column" Milestones (Orange County Chapter of PMI). August 2000.

"Randy's experience and insights were very helpful to understanding the material.  He was also able to adapt his experiences to fit in our culture at Intel which was also a great help."

"Randy was an excellent teacher.  I loved the use of music.  Learning should be fun, and Randy provided an environment that was both fun and professional."

Participant evaluation comments from project management fundamentals workshop, November 2001.

"At the program level, a considerable part of our approach was derived from the writings and teachings of Robert J. Graham and Randall L. Englund.  Their 1997 book, Creating an Environment for Successful Projects, The Quest to Manage Project Management, became our Bible for program leadership during PMO startup and continues to be a fundamental part of our thinking as we work to attain recognition as a truly project-based organization."

Colonel Gary C. LaGassey, United States Air Force, "Slowing Down the Bullet Train, or Maturing a Project Office"  Proceedings of the Project Management Institute Annual Seminars & Symposium, November 2001.

"In our leadership courses we work with project managers to help them gain confidence in best practices and to learn to persuade upper managers to support those practices.  Robert Graham and Randy Englund's Creating an Environment for Successful Projects (1997) is a recent effort to approach the issue from another direction and educate upper managers on project management best practices....

When one is speaking truth to power, a familiar activity for most project managers, it helps immensely to use the language of those in power to reveal those awful truths that they do not want to hear (as Randy Englund reminded Dennis Cohen in a recent conversation)."

 Cohen, Dennis J., and Graham, Robert J. The Project Manager's MBA: How to Translate Project Decisions into Business Success. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2001.

"Many brains are shut down in business today as individuals fight for survival.  It is a perfect time for accelerated learning.

'What is the major difference,' Robert J. Graham and Randall L. Englund ask in Creating an Environment for Successful Projects (1997), 'between those who survive and those who do not?  It is the organizational ability to learn, a desire to survive, and the ability to adapt' (p. 174)....

"In learning organizations, leaders are not heroes, but rather designers, teachers, and stewards.  These roles require different skills:  to build shared vision, to bring out and challenge prevailing mental models, and to foster more systemic patterns of thinking.  --Robert J. Graham and Randall L. Englund, Creating an Environment for Successful Projects"

Russell, Lou. The Accelerated Learning Fieldbook:  Making the Instructional Process FAST, FLEXIBLE, and FUN.  San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Pfeiffer, 1999.

"unless a portfolio is obviously and extremely out-of-balance,...how does a manager know whether the right balance is there?  If one lacks an idea of what the right balance is in the first place--the what should be--then all these balance maps and charts--the what is--are meaningless.  What is the existing balance being compared against?  A portfolio manager at Hewlett-Packard [Randy Englund] speculated about the optimal balance of projects--about whether there might be any 'rules of thumb' about the best split in long-term versus short-term projects, high-risk versus low-risk, and so on--much like rules of thumb exist in stock market investment portfolios."

Cooper, Robert G., Edgett, Scott J., and Kleinschmidt, Elko J. Portfolio Management for New Products.  Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1998, p. 81.

"This strategy is somewhat different at Hewlett-Packard, where the assumption is that a project is a project, and therefore project management training need not address the peculiarities of specific disciplines.  Courses offered to project managers at H-P include project techniques, behavioral aspects, organizational issues, business fundamentals, marketing, and customer issues.  Mentoring is also part of the educational process at H-P....  Notes from AMA's Executive Forum on the Project Organization...'Creating an Environment for Successful Projects:  The Quest to Manage Project Management,' by Randy Englund, Hewlett-Packard Company..."

Dinsmore, Paul C. Winning in Business with Enterprise Project Management. New York: AMACOM, 1999, pp. 144-145, 223.

"Randy Englund and Robert Graham declare that 'much of the work of the project office can be seen as missionary work--trying to convince people they will be better off if they change to new ways.'"

Dinsmore, Paul C., PMP, Contributing Editor. "It's All About Power," PM Network, May 2001, p.27.  (dinsmore@amcham.com.br)

Thank you for the wonderful piece by Randall L. Englund and Robert J. Graham ["Implementing a Project Office for Organizational Change," February PM Network]. .... As a project manager, and a Quaker, I too have recognized the "Quaker approach" as an excellent model for introducing (sometimes painful) changes to a culturally rich environment. I wonder if we'll begin to see George Fox's Journal as required reading in some of our finest business schools?

Ric Lutz

Vice President - Technology Programs

Belo Corp.

What it Takes to Be a Project Manager

"Randall L. Englund is co-author of Creating an Environment for Successful Projects (Jossey-Bass, 1997), project manager at Hewlett-Packard and a consultant on HP's Project Management Initiative team in Palo Alto, Calif.  He points to five characteristics of successful project managers.

1. Enthusiasm.  The team leader must really want to do the job.  Englund says, 'If you are not enthusiastic about the project, it's really hard for any of the team members to get on board.'

2. High tolerance for ambiguity.  In the beginning, just about everything seems ill defined--the goal, team roles and responsibilities, the entire structure of a project.  Englund says, 'You have to be able to come in and say, 'Well, its' pretty chaotic now, but by the time I'm done, we will have built something pretty fantastic.''

3. High coalition and team- building skills.  'You are there to work with people, to empower people, to remove all the obstacles that stand in the way of getting a project done,' says Englund.  'You come in with a big handicap if you don't have eh ability to pull people together.'

4. Client-customer orientation.  Whether the client is internal or external, projects are successful only if the customer is satisfied.  Forgetting to keep a clear focus on what the client needs and wants will spell disaster.

5. Business orientation.  How does the project fit into the strategic plans of the organization?  How does it add to the profitability of the company?  Englund cautions, 'For financial professionals, this may be the easiest element.  It's important not to let this overshadow the other criteria that lead to success.'"

Madigan, Carol Orsag. "Perfecting Project Management Skills." Business Finance:  Bottomline Solutions for Financial Executives . December 1998, pp. 30-32.

"GE Med Systems...wanted to recruit college graduates and provide a full year of classroom and field training before placing them in field offices to install and repair sophisticated medical products [Randy Englund was part of this program]....  The subsequent program has been very successful....  [The sponsoring manager] mobilized the currencies he did control (the budget of his department, including lines assigned to his subordinates), used them to demonstrate the value of the training program he advocated, and thus created a new currency (good performance) that helped him trade with his peers."

Cohen, Allan R. and Bradford, David L. Influence without Authority.  New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 1991, pp. 150-151.