Poor Leadership Leads to Underperforming Projects

by

3D_Team_Leadership_Arrow_ConceptUltimately, the path and the results of any project are the responsibility of its leader. Project leaders lacking the ability to lead others is a recipe for underperforming teams and projects, for project failures and, in 17% of projects costing $15 million or greater, for jeopardizing the company’s existence.

Every project has its challenges, such as organizational constraints, strategic alignment issues and technology breakdowns. For example, in a previous role of mine, the greatest thing continually inhibiting my projects were organizational issues. We worked within a matrix organization that, project after project, didn’t have testing resources aligned to our project needs. We operated with the mentality of, “We’ll take what we can get and if necessary QA can lag a sprint or two behind us in our agile delivery methodology.” As you would expect, looking back in hindsight, this led to underperforming projects. This was poor leadership on my part. I caved to the demands of my stakeholders and my supervisor demanding immediate progress. A better approach might have been to simply reschedule the effort for when the testing resources we needed were available. It may seem like a simple solution, but it takes a strong leader to have those conversations. They need to convey the issues impeding progress, the risks involved in progressing and hold their ground and not compromise the success of the project and ultimately the success of the team. Leaders’ ability to foresee, prepare, prevent and respond to these challenges are what differentiate them and often determine the fate of their projects.

Technology leaders of today need to have a comprehensive view of their organization’s strategy, technology, organization and delivery methodology so they can understand the interdependencies that can threaten the success of their projects. Experience is most certainly the more strenuous approach to honing one’s leadership abilities. However, learning from others’ experiences would be much more efficient.

If you are just beginning your journey into leadership or perhaps taking another look at your ability, I encourage you to focus first on the foundation of every great leader: character. Who you are will come through regardless of what you say or what you do. Oftentimes, people try to build a façade of themselves or a face they present to those they lead in an attempt to lead better or be seen as a great leader. What they don’t realize though is that it’s obvious. Also, the value leaders place in others or simply if they even like the people they lead comes across in time. Take a hard look at who you are. Figure out what you don’t like about yourself. Maybe there are a few habits or addictions you’ve formed over time that you need to break. Get some close people you trust and talk to them about it. Form your own ensemble. Allow them to help you figure out how to change and to hold you accountable to do so. Iron sharpens iron.

READ MORE

The Magic of Mortals

The Magic of Mortals

Daily we wake up to new developments in automation, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Machine Learning (ML). Across sectors and industries, automated solutions prove highly successful in surpassing the capacity of the human brain for certain tasks, improving...

read more
Leveling Up: How to Hone Your Skills at Home

Leveling Up: How to Hone Your Skills at Home

Leaders have been trying to crack the code on talent development for years. Recent studies have shown, however, that strength-focused leadership [read: intentionally elevating the qualities that already come naturally to us] is the clear winner for developing talent...

read more
Fake Case Study: Jack of all trades vs. Master of One

Fake Case Study: Jack of all trades vs. Master of One

  Listen to any earnings call or executive presentation and you will likely hear the terms “top line” and “bottom line.” These are words used to describe a business’s performance. According to Investopedia, the words are defined as follows: Top line refers to the...

read more
Your Personality Is Showing

Your Personality Is Showing

There I was, minding my own business one evening, digging into my organization's SEO performance (as one does), when I came across something interesting. Search terms related to "MBTI" — or the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, developed by Katherine Cook Briggs and Isabel...

read more
Lessons From a Change Manager Who Hates Change

Lessons From a Change Manager Who Hates Change

Hello. My name is Monique, and I’m a change manager who hates change.   After years of receiving “consulting therapy” from various mentors, I am now able to say these words out loud and proudly. But for a long time, it felt more like an admission of guilt. I mean, who...

read more
Creativity as a Cure

Creativity as a Cure

The topic of creative solutioning has been front and center these days as we talk more and more about organizational adaptability in the face of dynamic and uncertain times. For example, I recently read about a project that got me thinking about specific priorities...

read more
Thought Ensemble, a Pariveda Company — Why Now?

Thought Ensemble, a Pariveda Company — Why Now?

Big news over here as we close out the year - we have been acquired by Pariveda, a 750-person consulting firm in 12 markets across North America! We are now “Thought Ensemble, a Pariveda Company” and I’ll be serving as the Managing Vice President continuing to lead...

read more
Thought Ensemble Joins Pariveda Solutions!

Thought Ensemble Joins Pariveda Solutions!

Dallas, December 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Pariveda, a leader specializing in solving complex technology and business problems, announces the acquisition of Thought Ensemble. With the addition of Thought Ensemble, Pariveda now provides holistic business strategy,...

read more
Thoughts on Colorado’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Act

Thoughts on Colorado’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Act

It was about a year ago that we first started hearing about Colorado’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Act (SB19-085) and I knew it was going to be national news. We’d just gotten past the “Rocky Mountain High” jokes, and our lovely state was trying to break new ground...

read more