{"id":6285,"date":"2011-04-22T05:34:25","date_gmt":"2011-04-22T12:34:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=6285"},"modified":"2011-04-18T11:44:57","modified_gmt":"2011-04-18T18:44:57","slug":"the-complete-project-manager-political-skills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=6285","title":{"rendered":"The Complete Project Manager – Political Skills"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Political<\/a><\/p>\n

Embracing a complete project management mindset goes beyond techniques to complete projects on time, scope, and budget. \u00a0Improving organizational performance depends upon getting more accomplished through projects. \u00a0Just what gets accomplished and how comes under the purview of power and politics. \u00a0Organizations by their nature are political. \u00a0The political process is always at work in organizations.\u00a0 To be effective, project managers need to become politically sensitive<\/em>.\u00a0 Power is the ability to cause or prevent an action and make things happen. Since project management is all about getting results, it stands to reason that power is required.<\/p>\n

The challenge is to create an environment for positive politics.\u00a0 That is, people operate with a win-win attitude.\u00a0 All actions are out in the open instead of hidden, below the table, or behind closed doors.\u00a0 People demonstratively work hard toward a common good.\u00a0 Outcomes are desirable or at least acceptable to all parties concerned.\u00a0 Good, smart people, who trust each other (even if they do not always agree), getting together to solve clearly defined and important issues, guided by effective, facilitated processes, with full disclosure and all information out in the open, can accomplish almost anything.<\/p>\n

Recognize that organizations are political.\u00a0 A commitment to positive politics is an essential attitude that creates a healthy, functional organization. Complete project managers understand the power structure in their organizations.\u00a0 Clues to a power structure may come from an organizational chart, but how things get done goes far beyond that.\u00a0 Influence exists in people\u2019s hearts and minds, where power derives more from legitimacy than from authority.\u00a0 Its presence occurs in the implementation of decisions.<\/p>\n

Encourage excellence in project sponsorship by managing up the organization (see Englund and Bucero, Project Sponsorship: Achieving Management Commitment for Project Success<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n

Assessing the environment, rethinking attitudes towards power and politics, and developing an effective political plan are foundation steps.\u00a0 These help to address the power structure, identify critical stakeholder levels of trust and agreement, develop a guiding coalition, and determine areas of focus.<\/p>\n

An overlay to the project management process is to prepare a political plan.\u00a0 (A template and sample is available at www.englundpmc.com<\/a> in\u00a0\u201cOfferings\u201d.)\u00a0 This plan involves observing how an organization gets work done and performing stakeholder analysis.\u00a0 It further incorporates creative human dynamics to encourage proactive thinking about how to respond to and influence other people in the organization. Complete project managers develop political plans as well as effective project plans.<\/p>\n

Randy Englund, Englund Project Management Consultancy, www.englundpmc.com<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Embracing a complete project management mindset goes beyond techniques to complete projects on time, scope, and budget. \u00a0Improving organizational performance […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,844,6],"tags":[489,90,542,149],"class_list":["post-6285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leadership","category-integration","category-communications","tag-performance","tag-political-plan","tag-politics","tag-power"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6285"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9045,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6285\/revisions\/9045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}