The leadership gap

How do we successfully bring about change in the public and private sector? With continuous demands upon organisations to adapt and transform, the question is both urgent and important.

One element of the answer has been to introduce special structures called programmes and projects as vehicles of change. These structures are used to create focus on an objective, define what needs to be delivered, marshal resources, organise activities and control progress.

There are now methodologies (PRINCE2, MSP) available that can act to standardise common management processes around projects and programmes. These methods can be used well or badly, but they will only succeed when we recognize that change is not simply a function of management, but of leadership as well.

A ‘leadership gap’ occurs when projects and programmes are efficiently managed ‘by the book’, but not effectively led. The inevitable result is project and programme delivery without lasting benefit or valuable change.

As John Kotter (4) states: “The issue of leadership is centrally important because leadership is different from management, and the primary force behind successful change is the former, not the latter”.

The government services and CJIT in particular have recognised the issue, and have reflected this in their thinking on the development of project and programme capability. The CJIT development framework(1) places planning and implementing skills alongside leadership of change. In the wider context of government services, a recent progress report on professional development by the Civil Service Management Board (2) places leadership at the centre of the development model in which programme and project management are prominent core skills. Ian Magee, Chief Executive of Operations at the Department of Constitutional Affairs, in a recent interview (3) highlights that delivering successful transformation requires strong leadership skills combined with programme and project disciplines. The common message is clear – we need both project and programme management AND leadership in order to bring about change.

The implications of this are enormous. The first is that it is not sufficient to expose project and programme managers to methods through training courses in the expectation that this will fully equip them to carry out change initiatives.CITI have long advocated that professional project managers must receive education that transcends a purely methodological approach to equip managers for the complex challenges of change. This education can enable them to engage with sponsors and stakeholders to understand what successful outcomes are expected, and then exert judgements in the execution of projects to ensure that the right outcomes are realised.

The second implication flows from the first: projects and programmes must be recognised as complex political entities that must be fully aligned to the business, and therefore project and programme managers cannot lead change on their own. A host of other people must be enlisted to lead and influence the desired outcomes. Key among these is the sponsor.

In the September issue of CJM, CITI’s leader Christopher Worsley discussed (5) the need for effective sponsorship and governance. We all know what ‘sponsorship in name only’ feels like, but where governance bodies articulate the vision, define the objectives, identify the critical success factors, resolve issues and ensure broad support then they are expressing the leadership essential for programme and project success.

Others who must play their part include change champions from within the business structures receiving the change: this key role is to ensure that change is accepted by, not inflicted on the organisation. There are others – leadership in programmes and projects must also be expressed through the articulation of practical standards and ethics in their broadest sense. All these various leaders must be educated in the peculiar demands and disciplines of projects so that they can ‘get with the programme’.

Bringing about successful change is a complex issue with no single or simple answer. Recognition that programme and project management skills must be infused with leadership (and vice versa) and that these capabilities cannot be addressed in isolation, is the first step in finding the right answers for your challenges.

Sources

(1) CJIT ‘Skills for Justice Functional Map’

(2) ‘Professional Skills For Government’, May 2005 www.civilservice.gov.uk

(3) Jane Pickard “Order in the Court”, People Management magazine, 7 April 2005, page 32

(4) John P. Kotter “on What leaders Really Do”, Harvard Business School Press, 1999 (5) Christopher Worsley “Strength in Structures” September issue of CPM, page 32