Linking project talent and strategy

MARK A. LANGLEY PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE, PMI

Most organ­i­sa­tions around the world agree that tal­ent is one of their most valu­able resources and that a win­ning strat­e­gy is essen­tial for suc­cess. What’s less obvi­ous is how tal­ent and strat­e­gy are linked – and, more specif­i­cal­ly, how the link between project man­age­ment tal­ent and strat­e­gy has a direct impact on an organisation’s bot­tom line.

Research con­firms that the con­nec­tion between tal­ent man­age­ment and suc­cess­ful strat­e­gy imple­men­ta­tion is often over­looked. In an Econ­o­mist Intel­li­gence Unit study for the Project Man­age­ment Insti­tute (PMI), Ral­ly the Tal­ent to Win, just 41 per cent of respon­dents said their organ­i­sa­tion has a clear, accept­ed approach to strate­gic tal­ent devel­op­ment. A frac­tion of those report­ed their organ­i­sa­tions pro­vide suf­fi­cient finan­cial resources, C‑suite atten­tion or employ­ee time for the man­age­ment and devel­op­ment of the project man­age­ment tal­ent need­ed to imple­ment strat­e­gy.

The link between project man­age­ment tal­ent and strat­e­gy has a direct impact on an organisation’s bot­tom line

The stakes are high: on aver­age, £122 mil­lion of every £1 bil­lion invest­ed in projects and pro­grammes is wast­ed due to poor per­for­mance. Tal­ent defi­cien­cies are linked to unsuc­cess­ful strat­e­gy imple­men­ta­tion efforts 40 per cent of the time.

On the pos­i­tive side, the impact of align­ing tal­ent man­age­ment and organ­i­sa­tion­al strat­e­gy is sub­stan­tial. When organ­i­sa­tions excel at such align­ment, they waste 50 per cent less on their projects, giv­ing them a strong com­pet­i­tive advan­tage. They also have an aver­age project suc­cess rate of 72 per cent. By con­trast, organ­i­sa­tions that have not effec­tive­ly aligned strat­e­gy with tal­ent man­age­ment have an aver­age project suc­cess rate of 58 per cent.

A sig­nif­i­cant issue relat­ed to project tal­ent is sup­ply or, more specif­i­cal­ly, the lack of it. Accord­ing to PMI’s Tal­ent Man­age­ment – Pow­er­ing Strate­gic Ini­tia­tives in the PMO, four out of five respon­dents report­ed that their organ­i­sa­tions strug­gle to find qual­i­fied can­di­dates to fill open project man­age­ment posi­tions.

The chal­lenge is often relat­ed to the dif­fi­cul­ty in find­ing project man­age­ment pro­fes­sions with the right com­bi­na­tion of capa­bil­i­ties.

His­tor­i­cal­ly, when eval­u­at­ing project man­age­ment skills, the great­est empha­sis has been placed on tech­ni­cal project man­age­ment skills and sec­tor-spe­cif­ic prod­uct knowl­edge. It has become clear, though, that lead­er­ship skills and strate­gic and busi­ness man­age­ment exper­tise are just as impor­tant – if not more so. The organ­i­sa­tions that are most suc­cess­ful with strat­e­gy imple­men­ta­tion and man­ag­ing tal­ent look for project man­age­ment per­son­nel who can demon­strate the com­bi­na­tion of tech­ni­cal, lead­er­ship, and strate­gic and busi­ness man­age­ment exper­tise – what we call “the tal­ent tri­an­gle”.

It’s clear­ly to an organisation’s ben­e­fit to have a strong com­mit­ment to tal­ent man­age­ment and align­ment with strat­e­gy. Those that do have high­er suc­cess rates with projects and they waste 33 per cent less mon­ey on strate­gic ini­tia­tives.

Because of the obvi­ous ben­e­fits of focus­ing on tal­ent and its rela­tion­ship to strat­e­gy, it puz­zled me for many years that so many organ­i­sa­tions weren’t giv­ing these mat­ters the atten­tion they deserve. Sev­er­al years ago I had the chance to talk about this with man­age­ment guru Tom Peters. I asked him why lead­ers need to be remind­ed about some­thing as obvi­ous as how impor­tant it is to find and nur­ture the right peo­ple.

He looked at me and said, “You know why, Mark? Because it’s hard.” And it’s true. But it’s also true that peo­ple and tal­ent will always be cen­tral to organ­i­sa­tion­al suc­cess, and those organ­i­sa­tions that don’t shy away from the hard tasks will see bet­ter results.

With that in mind, we sug­gest a focus on the fol­low­ing five prac­tices to help boost an organisation’s tal­ent man­age­ment capa­bil­i­ty and strength­en its strate­gic capa­bil­i­ty:

• Mov­ing resources from cur­rent assign­ments to next oppor­tu­ni­ties effec­tive­ly. This helps facil­i­tate knowl­edge trans­fer and boost employ­ee engage­ment.

• Iden­ti­fy­ing replace­ment can­di­dates need­ed because of turnover or churn. Peri­od­i­cal­ly assess your tal­ent pipeline and adjust your recruit­ment prac­tices and process­es as need­ed.

• Cre­at­ing broad suc­ces­sion plans across organ­i­sa­tion­al bound­aries. Organ­i­sa­tions that have strong align­ment of tal­ent and strat­e­gy have mul­ti­ple project man­age­ment career paths, includ­ing ones that are more project focused and ones that are more busi­ness ori­ent­ed.

• Inte­grat­ing tal­ent man­age­ment across the organ­i­sa­tion. That means a focus on per­for­mance man­age­ment, learn­ing and train­ing, lead­er­ship devel­op­ment, and recog­ni­tion rewards.

• Hir­ing not just for tech­ni­cal skills. Busi­ness strat­e­gy and lead­er­ship skills along with tech­ni­cal skills form the afore­men­tioned “tal­ent tri­an­gle” – the com­bi­na­tion of skills most in demand for project man­age­ment.

UK organ­i­sa­tions that fol­low this approach are already see­ing pos­i­tive results. “Tal­ent devel­op­ment is a high pri­or­i­ty for us and our Project and Pro­gramme Man­age­ment Devel­op­ment Needs Analy­sis pro­gramme has won top indus­try awards for its capa­bil­i­ty to help project man­age­ment pro­fes­sion­als improve,” says Dave Gun­ner, head of the PPM Acad­e­my at Hewlett Packard Enter­prise.

“Addi­tion­al­ly, PMI’s Project Man­age­ment Pro­fes­sion­al® cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­vides us with a con­sis­tent frame­work and knowl­edge base for our project man­agers across the globe, who embody the qual­i­ties of the PMI tal­ent tri­an­gle. Our project man­agers, equipped with these skills, are able to exe­cute suc­cess­ful­ly against projects and pro­grammes, and con­tribute to accom­plish­ing over­all strate­gic goals.”

Strate­gic change hap­pens through projects and pro­grammes. I often say that if you can’t see your organisation’s future in your port­fo­lio of strate­gic ini­tia­tives, you have no hope of achiev­ing that future. And the corol­lary to that state­ment is you have no hope of achiev­ing that future if you don’t have the tal­ent who can exe­cute those ini­tia­tives.

Whether it’s about improv­ing the bot­tom line, return­ing more mon­ey to share­hold­ers or stay­ing ahead of your com­peti­tors, it comes back to mak­ing the appro­pri­ate invest­ments in tal­ent in accor­dance with your strat­e­gy. Giv­en that there is already a short­age of qual­i­fied project tal­ent and that the trend is expect­ed to wors­en, invest­ing in hir­ing and devel­op­ing tal­ent should itself be a strate­gic pri­or­i­ty.

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it PMI.org/Pulse