PM Network - June 2016

The
Softer
Side
People skills prove just as
important as technical ones on a
challenging project.
By Bernadette Williams, PMP

I realized that forcing the team to change their business processes would never work. I would be telling them to fix things that were working perfectly—from their perspective. But by employing the following three practices, I was able to lead them to water and get them to want to drink.

1. Sell the vision with passion

The first step in leading your team toward a common goal is articulating a vivid vision for the project. That said, the adage “more is caught than taught” is true; people will respond to your actions more than your words. In order to lead my team toward standardization, I needed to have a genuine passion for the project.

I displayed excitement for the opportunity our
team had to make a real difference. The focus of
the team became what we would gain as a result
of standardization, instead of what would be lost. I
The project aimed to implement an online grant
and loan application system based on a com-
mercial off-the-shelf (COTS) product. The cost of
customizing the COTS product would have been
extremely high, so instead, we had to change busi-
ness processes to make the product work.

It’s no small task to help business experts standardize long-standing processes across an organization. Many of these processes had been in place for years and had been customized to meet the skills and needs of individual staff members.