Leadership « Projects + Management = Project-Management

Archive for the ‘Leadership’ Category

Integrating the change program with the parent organization (Lehtonen & Martinsuo, 2009)

Dienstag, April 28th, 2009

Lehtonen, Päivi; Martinsuo, Miia: Integrating the change program with the parent organization; in: International Journal of Project Management, Vol. 27 (2009), No. 2, pp. 154-165.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2008.09.002

Lehtonen & Martinsuo analyse the boundary spanning activities of change programmes. They find five different types of organisational integration – internal integration 1a) in the programme, 1b) in the organisation; external integration 2a) in the organisation, 2b) in the programme, and 3) between programme and parent organisation.

Furthermore they identify mechanisms of integration on these various levels. These mechanisms are

	Mechanism of integration
Structure & Control	Steering groups, responsibility of line managers
Goal & content link	Programme is part of larger strategic change initiative
People links	Cross-functional core team, part-time team members who stay in local departments
Scheduling & Planning links	Planning, project management, budgeting, reporting
Isolation	Abandon standard corporate steering group, split between HQ and branch roll-out

Among most common are four types of boundary spanning activities – (1) Information Scout, (2) Ambassador, (3) Boundary Shaping, and (4) Isolation. Firstly, information scouting is done via workshops, interviews, questionnaire, data requests &c. Secondly, the project ambassador presents the programme in internal forums, focuses on quick wins and show cases them, publishes about the project in HR magazines &c. Thirdly, the boundary shaping is done by negotiations of scope and resources, and by defining responsibilities. Fourthly, isolation typically takes place through withholding information, establishing a separate work/team/programme culture, planning inside; basically by gate keeping and blocking.

Posted in Boundary, Case Study, Context, Culture, Decision Making, Leadership, Organisation, Organisational capabilities, Sponsor, Stakeholder Management | 8 Comments »

Decision Making Within Distributed Project Teams (Bourgault et al., 2008)

Montag, November 3rd, 2008

Bourgault, Mario; Drouin, Nathalie; Hamel, Émilie: Decision Making Within Distributed Project Teams – An Exploration of Formalization and Autonomy as Determinants of Success; in: Project Management Journal, Vol. 39 (2008), Supplement, pp. S97S110.
DOI: 10.1002/pmj.20063

Bourgault et al. analyse group decision making in virtual teams. Their article is based on the principles of limited rationality, i.e. deciding is choosing from different alternatives, and responsible choice, i.e. deciding is anticipating outcomes of the decision.

Existing literature controversially discusses the effects of virtualising teams. Some authors argue that virtual teams lack social pressure and thus smaler likelihood of showing escalation of committment behaviour, whilst making more objective and faster decisions. Other authors find no difference in working style between virtual and non-virtual teams. Generally literature explains that decision-errors are mostly attributed to break-downs in rationality, which are caused by power and group dynamics. Social pressure in groups also prevents efficiency. In any team with distributed knowledge the leader must coordinate and channel the information flow.

Bourgault et al. conceptualise that Formalisation and Autonomy impact the quality of decision-making, which then influences the team work effectiveness. All this is moderated by the geographic dispersion of the team.
They argue that formalisation, which structures and controls the decision making activities, helps distributed teams to share information. Autonomy is a source of conflict, for example with higher management due to a lack of understanding and trust, ultimately it weakesn a project decision-making because it diverts horizontal information flow within the team to vertical information flow between project and management.
Quality of decision-making process – the authors argue that groups have more information resources and therefore can make better decisions, but this comes at an increased cost for decision-making. Geographical distributed teams lack signals and have difficulties in sharing information. Thus high quality teamwork benefits from more dispersed knowledge but low quality teamwork suffers from a lack of hands-on leadership.
Teamwork effectiveness – this construct has mostly been measured using satisfaction measurements and student samples. Other measures are the degree of taks completion, goal achievement, self-efficacy (intent to stay on the team, ability to cope, percieved individual performance, perceived team performance, satisfaction with the team). Bourgault et al. measure teamwork effectiveness asking for the perceived performance on taks completion, goal achievement, information sharing, conflict resolution, problem solving, and creating a prefereable and sustainable environment.

The authors‘ quantitative analysis shows that in moderated teams all direct and indirect effects can be substantiated, with exception of the autonomy influencing the quality of decision-making. Similarily in highly dispersed teams all direct and indirect effects, but the direct influence of formalisation on teamwork effectiveness, could be proven.

Bourgault et al. conclude with three points of recommendation for the praxis – (1) Distribution of a team contributes to high quality of decisions, although it seems to come at a high cost. (2) Autonomous teams achieve better decisions – „despite the fear of an out of sight out of control syndrome“. (3) Formalisation adds value to teamwork especially the more distributed the team is.

Posted in Critical Success Factors, Decision Making, Knowledge Management, Leadership | 1 Comment »

Making a difference? Evaluating an innovative approach to the project management Centre of Excellence in a UK government department (O’Leary & Williams, 2008)

Donnerstag, Oktober 23rd, 2008

O’Leary, Tim; Williams, Terry: Making a difference? Evaluating an innovative approach to the project management Centre of Excellence in a UK government department; in: International Journal of Project Management, Vol. 26 (2008), No. 5, pp. 556-565.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2008.05.013

The UK has rolled out the ambitious programme of setting-up IT Centres of Excellence in all its departments. Focal point of these Centres of Excellence are Programme Offices.

The role of these Programme Offices has been defined as: Reporting, Recovering & Standardising.
The objectives for the programme offices are monitoring and reporting the status of the IT initiatives in the department, and implementing a structured life cycle methodology. This methodology ties in with a stage-gate framework that needs to be introduced. Additionally hit-teams of delivery managers have been set-up to turn-around ailing projects.

O’Leary and Williams find that the interventions seem to work successfully, whereas the reporting and standardisation objective has yet to be fulfilled. Moreover the authors analyse the root causes for this success. They found that the basis of success was:

Administrative control of department’s IT budget
Leadership of IT director
Exploitation of project management rhetoric
Quality of delivery managers

Posted in Actuality Research, Critical Success Factors, IT Project, Leadership, Multi-project management, Organisation, Organisational capabilities, Program Management, Project Recovery, Public Sector, Standards | 1 Comment »

Project leadership in multi-project settings – Findings from a critical incident study (Kaulio, 2008)

Donnerstag, Oktober 23rd, 2008

Kaulio, Matti A.: Project leadership in multi-project settings – Findings from a critical incident study; in: International Journal of Project Management, Vol. 26 (2008), No. 4, pp. 338-347.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2007.06.005

Kaulio asked project leaders, who operate in a multi-project environment about critical incidents in their last projects. The idea of critical incidents is, that as soon as a participant remembers the critical incident it must have some importance. Ideally it then is followed by a blueprint analysis followed by measuring the criticality is measured on each contact point. Kaulio focusses only on the elicitation of the critical incidents, without doing the triple-loop of the original research concept. The author shows the frequency of critical incidents happening:

Technical difficulties
Dyadic leadership
Group dynamics
Consultant relations
Client relations
Peer relations
Project adjustments
Re-prioritisations
Liked dyadic-group processes
Formation of project
Court decisions
Dependencies
Requirements specification

Kaulio then maps these critical incidents according to the Locus of Control (internal vs. external) and whether they are a Management or a Leadership issue. Thus he argues most of the critical incidents can be tied back to internal project leadership:

Locus of Control	External	Project adjustment Court decision	Consultant relations Client relations Peer relations Formation of project Dependencies
Locus of Control	Internal	Requirements specification	Dyadic leadership Group dynamics Linked dyadic-group processes Technical difficulties Re-prioritisation
		Management	Leadership
		Focus

Posted in Conflicts, Critical Incident Technique, Failed Projects, IT Project, Leadership, Multi-project management | 3 Comments »

Images as action instruments in complex projects (Taxén & Lilliesköld, 2008)

Montag, Oktober 20th, 2008

Taxén, Lars; Lilliesköld, Joakim: Images as action instruments in complex projects; in: International Journal of Project Management, Vol. 26 (2008), No. 5, pp. 527-536.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2008.05.009

Images are quite powerful. I hate motivational posters which a distant corporate HQ decorates every meeting room with, but I once saw the department strategy visualised by these folks, they include all employees and the group dynamic is unbelievable. Later on they cleaned the images, blew them up, and posted them around the company – of course, meaningless for an outsider but a powerful reminder for everyone who took part.

Taxén & Lilliesköld analyse the images typically used in project management. They find that these common images, such as PERT/CPM, Gantt charts, or WBS are increasingly difficult to use in complex projects, in this case the authors look into a large-scale IT project.

Based on Activity Domain Theory they develop alternative images better suited for complex projects. Activity Domain Theory, however, underlines that all tasks on a project (= each activity domain) have a motive, fulfils needs, modifies objects, and has actors. Outcomes are produced by activity domains and are at the same time prerequisites for activity domains. Activity domains have activity modalities, which can be either manifested as resources or as communal meaning. These activity modalities are

Contextualisation = situation of human action
Spatialisation = need for spatial orientation in human action
Temporalisation = need for certain order in human action
Stabilisation = need for certain rules and norms in human action
Transition = need for interaction between activity domains

Useful images, the authors argue, need to fulfil these needs while being situated in the context of the activity. Traditional images focus on optimisation and control, rather than on coordination and action. Thus alternate images need to focus on dependencies and integration; on value comprehensibility and informality over formality and rigour.

Alternative images suited for complex project management are

Anatomies – showing modules, work packages and their dependencies of the finished product, e.g., functional node diagrams
Dependency diagrams – showing the incremental assembly of the product over a couple of releases, e.g. increment plan based on dependencies (a feature WBS lack)
Release matrices – showing the flow of releases, how they fit together, and when which functionality becomes available, e.g., integration plan
Information flow diagrams – showing the interfaces between modules, e.g. DFD

Posted in Case Study, Communication, Complexity, Critical Chain, IT Project, Leadership, Methodology, Planning, Project Organisation, Tools, Uncertainty management | 3 Comments »

An experimental investigation of factors influencing perceived control over a failing IT project (Jani, 2008)

Montag, Oktober 20th, 2008

Jani, Arpan: An experimental investigation of factors influencing perceived control over a failing IT project; in: International Journal of Project Management, Vol. 26 (2008), No. 7, pp. 726-732.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2008.06.004

Jani wants to analyse why failing projects are not terminated, a spiralling development also called escalation of commitment (I posted about a case discussion of the escalation of commitment on the TAURUS project). Jani performed a computer simulated experiment to show the antecedents of a continuation decision.

He rooted the effect of escalating commitment on the self-justification theory, prospect theory, agency theory, and also on sunk cost effects & project completion effects.

Self-justification motivates behaviour to justify attitudes, actions, beliefs, and emotions. It is an effect of cognitive dissonance and an effective cognitive strategy to reduce the dissonance. An example for this behaviour is continuing with a bad behaviour, because stopping it would question the previous decision (= escalation of commitment).

Another example is bribery. People bribed with a large amount of money, tend not to change their attitudes, which were unfavourable otherwise there was nor reason to bribe them in the first place. But Festinger & Carlsmith reported that bribery with a very small amount of money, made people why they accepted the bribe although it had been that small, thus thinking that there must be something to it and changing their attitude altogether. Since I did it, and only got 1 Dollar is a very strong dissonance. Here is a nice summary about their classic experiments. Here is one of their original articles.

Jani argues that all these theoretical effects fall into two factors – (1) self-serving bias and (2) past experience. These influence the judgement on his two antecedents – (1) project risk factors (endogeneous and exogeneous) and (2) task specific self-efficacy. The latter is measured as a factor step high vs. low and describes how you perceive your capability to influence events that impact you (here is a great discussion of this topic by Bandura).

The two factors of project risk and task specific self-efficacy then influence the perceived control over the project which influences the continuation decision. Jani is able to show that task specific self-efficacy moderates the perceived project control. In fact he manipulated the project risks to simulate a failing projects, at no time participants had control over the outcome of their decisions. Still participants with a higher self-efficacy judged their perceived control significantly higher than participants with lower self-efficacy. This effect exists for engogenous and exogenous risk factors alike.

The bottom-line of this experiment is quite puzzling. A good project manager, who has a vast track record of completing past projects successfully, tends to underestimate the risks impacting the project. Jani recommends that even with great past experiences on delivering projects, third parties should always review project risks. Jani asks for caution using this advice since his experiment did not prove that joint evaluation corrects for this bias effectively.

Lee, Margaret E.: E-ethical leadership for virtual project teams; in: International Journal of Project Management, in press (2008).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2008.05.012

I quickly want to touch on this article, since the only interesting idea which stroke me was that Lee did draw a line from Kant to Utilitarism to the notion of Duty. She then concludes that it is our Kantesian, Utalitarian duty to involve stakeholders.

Posted in Decision Making, Failed Projects, Leadership, Portfolio Management, Program Management, Project Recovery | 1 Comment »

Managing user expectations on software projects – Lessons from the trenches (Petter, in press)

Dienstag, Oktober 7th, 2008

Petter, Stacie: Managing user expectations on software projects – Lessons from the trenches; in: International Journal of Project Mangement, in press (2008).
doi:10.1016/j.ijproman.2008.05.014

Petter interviewed 12 project management professionals on managing the end-user expectations. What worked and what did not work?

The conclusions cover three broad areas – end user involvement, leadership, and trust. As far as user involvement is concerned the practices that work included

Listening to users
Asking questions
Understanding concerns about change and actively ease these
Working with the user (not at or to them)
Let user make tough choices, e.g., on functionality, budget, cost, time
Create small user groups to hear them all
Giving credit to specific users for ideas
Keep users involved and updated throughout the project

What did not work were – not communicating the project status, and trying to outlast difficult users.

On the leadership dimension useful practices mentioned include

Ensure project champion
Articulate clear vision
Motivate team to get it done
Educate users on benefits
Obtain buy-in from primary stakeholders

Factors leading to end-user dissatisfaction were

Scope creep
No mission
No explanation of purpose/value of the system
Follow others

Trust building activities that worked well, were sharing good and bad news, and providing specific times for deliverables. What did not work were hiding the true status of the project, and ‚fake it until you make it‘ also known as hiding knowledge gaps.

Posted in Case Study, Critical Incident Technique, Critical Success Factors, Failed Projects, IT Project, Leadership, Stakeholder Management, Trust | 4 Comments »

Preparing project managers to deal with complexity (Thomas & Mengel, 2008) and Preparing the mind for dynamic management (Hartman, 2008)

Dienstag, Oktober 7th, 2008

Thomas, Janice; Mengel, Thomas: Preparing project managers to deal with complexity Advanced project management education; in: International Journal of Project Management, Vol. 26 (2008), pp. 304-315.
doi:10.1016/j.ijproman.2008.01.001

Hartman, Francis: ; in: International Journal of Project Management, Vol. 26 (2008), pp. 258-267.
doi:10.1016/j.ijproman.2008.01.007

Complexity is a meme that just doesn’t want to die. I wrote before about articles on the foundamentals of complexity theory and project management, about the use of autonomous cells in project organisations and how they prevent complex project systems from failing, and the complex dynamics of project entities in a programme. Not surprisingly this meme has spread into the coaching and project management education world where there is some money to make of it.

Thomas & Mengel argue that the current project manager education is not suited at all to prepare for complex projects. The focus on standardisation, control, and hard systems thinking stands in direct opposition to the actuality of projects, which show high complexity in roles, high degrees of chaos and uncertainty.
Theoretically Thomas & Mengel base their discussion on three complexity/chaos theory concepts

Chaos theory – explaining the behaviour of dynamic and unstable systems
Dissipative structures – explaining moment of dynamic stability and instability
Complex adaptive systems – explaining behaviour of systems with a large number of independent agents, and organisational evolution and learning

So what does it take to be a Complex Project’s Manager?
Thomas & Mengel propose that understanding the complex environment is far more important than using tools and techniques of project management. Furthermore they outline three key capabilities to manage complexity

IQ – possessing the self-knowledge to adapt existing tools
EQ – possessing the emotional skills to coach and manage people
SQ – possessing the capacity for finding meaning

In their framework Thomas & Mengel see most of today’s project managers as Experts, these are project managers heavy on the IQ side of their IQ-EQ-SQ-Triangle. The authors see two developmental strategies. One is coping with uncertainty by moving towards the sense-making SQ corner of the triangle and becoming a Leader. The other developmental direction is coping with complexity by strengthening the EQ corner and becoming a Manager.

Similar ideas are discussed in the paper by Hartman. Altough he does not call the elephant on the table complex project management but he names it dynamic management. Blink or not Blink – Hartman argues that wisdom and intuition are the two desired qualities in a leader with a mind for dynamic management. Furthermore he identifies three traits absolutely necessary

Pattern recognition & decision-making
Relationship building & communication
Integrity & trust

Posted in Complexity, Leadership, Methodology, Personality, Program Management, Standards | 3 Comments »

The effectiveness in managing a group of multiple projects: Factors of influence and measurement criteria (Patanakul & Milosevic, in press)

Freitag, Oktober 3rd, 2008

Patanakul, Peerasit; Milosevic, Dragan: The effectiveness in managing a group of multiple projects: Factors of influence and measurement criteria; in: International Journal of Project Management, in press, corrected proof.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2008.03.001Update: This article has been published inInternational Journal of Project Management, Vol. 27 (2009), pp. 216233. Multi-project management. I covered a similar topic yesterday looking at it from a Complexity Theory viewpoint. The authors argue that multi-project management is increasingly used in the industry mainly for reasons of better utilisation. [Having worked as a multi-project manager for marketing projects back in the old days, I don’t know if that is really true. My projects always culminated in a week with crazy workload, followed by dry spells, where I bored myself to death.]Patanakul & Milosevic analyse the critical success factors for managing multi-projects from a ‚bundle of projects‘-perspective, i.e., by interviewing a multi-project manager and his/her supervisor. Thus they build six case studies of organisations using multi-project-management. Accordingly the authors define multi-project as the middle state in the project continuum, where single projects are on one end, and programmes are on the other end of the scale.What do Patankul & Milosevic find? The antecedents of multi-project management effectiveness are

Organisational field
- Project assignments
  - Projects‘ strategic importance
  - Required fit to managers‘ competencies
  - Organisational & personal limitations
- Resource allocation
  - Sufficient resource allocation
  - Sustainable resource allocation
- Organisational culture
  - Commitment
  - Communication
  - Teamwork
  - Rewards
Operational field
- Project management processes
  - Individual processes
  - Inter-project processes
  - Interdependency management
- Competencies of the multi-project manager
  - Competencies for leading individual projects
  - Competencies for coordinating between projects

Finally the authors identify the consequences of multi-project management effectiveness as

Organisation
- Resource productivity
- Organisational learning
Project
- Time-to-Market
- Customer satisfaction
Personal
- Personal growth
- Personal satisfaction

Posted in Case Study, Complexity, Critical Success Factors, Leadership, Multi-project management | No Comments »

Leadership for future construction industry – Agenda for authentic leadership (Toor & Ofori, 2008)

Montag, September 22nd, 2008

Toor, Shamas-ur-Rehman; Ofori, George: Leadership for future construction industry – Agenda for authentic leadership; in: International Journal of Project Management, in press (2008).

Ever since Bill George popularized the meme „authentic leadership“ more and more articles pop up investigating this concept. In George’s words ‚authentic leadership‘ is simply just being yourself. Leadership is authenticity, not style! This includes building your own leadership style, adapting it to different situations, but also realising which weaknesses you have. Enough said – a summary can be found here.

Toor & Ofori look into the authentic leadership concept and root the ’new‘ way of leading on three antecedents – (1) image/style of the traditional project manager, (2) postitive mediation of leadership antecedents, and (3) positive environmental context. Thus allowing the authentic leader to develop, where leaders achieve awareness, can process unbiased, showthe distinct/authentic behaviour, and develop a relational orientation.
In Toor & Ofori’s article such a developmental process leads to an authentic leader who is characterised by

Confidence
Hopefulness
Optimism
Resilience
Transparency
Moral/Ethics
Future orientation
Associate building

Posted in Leadership | 2 Comments »

Evaluating leadership, IT quality, and net benefits in an e-government environment (Prybutok et al., 2008)

Mittwoch, September 17th, 2008

Prybutok, Victor, R.; Zhang, Xiaoni; Ryana, Sherry D.: Evaluating leadership, IT quality, and net benefits in an e-government environment; in: Information & Management; Vol. 45 (2008), No. 3, pp. 143-152.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2007.12.004

The authors did something quit unusual in eGovernment research, they went quantitative. Their survey consisted of 178 useful respondents among the public workers of Denton, TX. It generally tried to establish the cause-effect relationships between

Leadership Triad
- Leadership
- Strategic Planning
- Customer/Market Focus
IT Quality Triad
- Information Quality
- System Quality
- Service Quality
Net Benefits

The results support the hypothesis that the MBNQA leadership triad has a positive impact on the IT quality triad. The authors also found that both leadership and IT quality increased the benefits.

Posted in Leadership, Public Sector | No Comments »

The impacts of charismatic leadership style on team cohesiveness and overall performance during ERP implementation (Wang et al. 2005)

Montag, August 11th, 2008

Wang, Eric; Chou, Huey-Wen; Jiang, James: The impacts of charismatic leadership style on team cohesiveness and overall performance during ERP implementation; in: International Journal of Project Management, Vol. 23 (2005), No. 3, pp. 173-180.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2004.09.003

„That is so neo-behaviouristic of you!“ how many times have you heard this? Whilst it is true that a multitude of critical success factors were proven IT projects, leadership is typically among the No. 1s of those. In this article Wang, Chou & Jiang ask the question: „How do charismatic leader impact their teams and subsequently project success?“

Wang et al. identify a couple of directs of impact of charismatic leaders. Usually they enthusiast people, develop trust, build confidence, and build commitment. Thus they create a high team satisfaction. Moreover they fulfil their mentor role with empathy. Charismatic leaders impact each team member individually. Team members internalise the leader’s values and goals which leads to transcend the team’s self interest for a higher goal.

Wang et al. showed empirically in a sample of 106 Taiwanese companies that charismatic leadership positively, directly and in-directly influences team cohesiveness and project team performance.
Now all what is left to do is to become a charismatic leader.

Posted in Leadership | 2 Comments »

Management competences, not tools and techniques: A grounded examination of software project management at WM-data (Rose et al., 2007)

Dienstag, Juli 15th, 2008

Rose, Jeremy; Pedersen, Keld; Hosbond, Jens Henrik; Kræmmergaard, Pernille: Management competences, not tools and techniques – A grounded examination of software project management at WM-data; in: Information and Software Technology, Vol. 49 (2007), No. 6, pp. 605624.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2007.02.005

Rose et al. approach software management with a competence perspective and identify 7 competencies for a successful software project management by using an qualitative approach of grounded theory. They investigate the project managers of a medium sized software development company in Denmark. The 7 competencies they find are

Technical management (code and techniques)
Process management (traditional project mgmt. processes)
Team management (form and develop a team)
Customer management (maintain customer relationships)
Business management (achieve financial results)
Personal management (develop soft skills)
Uncertainty management (manage interrelated complex problems)

Posted in Critical Success Factors, Leadership | 1 Comment »

Matching the project managers leadership style to project type (Müller & Turner, 2007)

Montag, Juli 14th, 2008

Müller, Ralf; Turner, Rodney J.: Matching the project managers leadership style to project type; in: International Journal of Project Management, Vol. 25 (2007), No. 1, pp. 21-32.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2006.04.003

Müller & Turner shortly describe 6 modern and 3 historical schools of leadership before they investigate if leadership styles have an impact on the success of projects and whether there are different styles needed for different projects. The 9 schools they outline briefly are

Confucius – it’s all about relationships, moderation, values, and process
Aristotle – it’s all about relationships, values, and process
Barnard – it’s all about relationship vs. processes
Trait Theory – leaders are born not made
Behavioural Theory – leadership skills can be developed
Contingency Theory – effective leadership depends on the situation
Visionary/charismatic leadership – transformation vs. transaction
Emotional Intelligence – your (gut) feelings matter
Competency – all matters (traits, behaviours, styles, emotions, processes, intellect…)

Furthermore the authors link each item of their 3 dimensional leadership model (Emotional, Managerial, Intellectual) to project performance in different project categories. Their results show that in general IT projects motivational skills and a strategic perspective positively influence the project’s success. In the case of high performing IT projects Self-Awareness, Communication and Self-Development impact the success positively, whereas visionary capacities have a negative impact on the success.

Posted in Leadership | 1 Comment »

Leadership styles in information technology projects (Thite, 2000)

Montag, Juli 14th, 2008

Thite, Mohan: Leadership styles in information technology projects; in: International Journal of Project Management, Vol. 18 (2000), No. 4, pp. 235-241.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0263-7863(99)00021-6

Mohan studied 36 projects in Australia and looked into successful IT project management leadership styles. His results indicate that a combination of transformational and technical leadership behaviours augment the effectiveness of transactional leadership leading to high project success. Unfortunately Mohan also found that there is no one leadership style that is effective in all project situations. Therefore he recommends an underlying yet flexible style characterised by organisational catalyst, intellectual stimulation, behavioural charisma, and contingent reward behaviours for enhanced leadership effectiveness.

Posted in Leadership | 1 Comment »

Applying Traits Theory of Leadership to Project Management (Gehring, 2007)

Freitag, Juli 11th, 2008

Gehring, Dean R.: Applying Traits Theory of Leadership to Project Management; in: IEEE Engineering Management Review, Vol. 35 (2007), No. 3, pp. 109ff.
And also in: Project Managment Journal, Vol. 38 (2007), No. 1, pp. 44-54.

I, personally, have mixed attitudes towards the whole Personality Traits Theory. While I still think there is some ground for the NEO-PI constructs and scale, I really do believe the whole Meyers-Briggs-Type-Indicator (MBTI) is total crap, especially using a magical sorting hat which uses binominal (E or I, S or N, T or F, J or P) values on dimensions, when the scale seems to be normally distributed. Furthermore there seems to be proof that the whole thing is situational. I am an eNFP by the way.

However Gehring outlines the typically looked for leadership competencies of project managers in a very nice structured way (see my graphical summary). The author further describes the personality traits usually found with specific MBTI types. He then matches competencies to MBTI types.
ENTJ, ENFJ, INTJ, ISTJ, and INFJ art the top 5 matches between competencies and personality types. Unfortunately the sample is rather small (53 respondents) and the article lacks any statistical information about the validity and quality of the results.

Posted in Leadership, Personality | 2 Comments »

Projects + Management = Project-Management