Dealing with Friction related to the Functional Hierarchy and the Project

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about the difficulties that the project manager goes through when dealing with an organization with low maturity in project management. He shows how the project manager can cope with the problems arising from this scenario.

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Episode transcript

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Speaker 1 (4s): Hello everybody welcome to the five minutes BM podcast today. I like to discuss with you how you can handle with the Friction related to the year Marquis and the functional roles and your project. This is the main concern of all project managers, because if you don't have a very strong project sized structure, it will be always a challenge. When we, you need to handle with different groups, with different areas inside your organization. And one of the biggest challenges you need to keep in mind all the time is that you need to identify this challenges.

And the first thing you need to do is to understand how your organization work. What does the structure? Because some organizations are more ready to embrace project management. The orders are more your article and for Chanel planet and this organizations, it will be much harder for you to navigate through different let's suppose you are releasing the product that will be cross Functional. If you don't have dissolve toricity to be really a challenge for you.

And now we'll be talking later how you can handle this. This second is the core pro aspect of the organization. Every single organization is unique. Some organizations, you have great access to higher levels to senior levels in your organization. In order cases, you don't have this and you need to understand how this cultural aspects can impact on your work. And the third aspect that will help you to identify how big is your challenge is the maturity and let straws late maturity.

Maturity is the natural way that you can handle your own projects. So it's the natural flow of your project. So its how natural you, you can manage an you can do the work. For example, if you are very used to Project, you have a more mature organization because you know all the challenges, but it's the first time it fits your organization is not aware and is not prepared to do that. It's always a big challenge.

And what should you do when you face this kind of challenge in let's suppose you are a project manager in a quite heirarchical organization. The first thing I want to advise you is that you need to adapt yourself. You need to adapt yourself. It's not one size fits all. You need to adapt your leadership style to do this different conditions. And one of the key aspects of this adaptation of your work is to understand how big is your support in your sponsorship?

How strong you, or is your sponsor and how willing is your sponsor to support your project? Here's your project real relevant that your sponsor is really committed to support it. Then you can use her or his position in the organization to help you to navigate. It's like having a new folder broader, you know how to protect you. But if you don't have this, you need to understand that you need to be much more conservative in the way you drive your project.

You can not be so driver, you cannot push too much. If you know that you have a very strong urological, a composition of your organization and low support. So you need to understand this risk and you need to be more conservative. And the turd is that your power style let's translate. What is power style? A lot of people think that power comes from Yarra key coming from dissolve toricity power.

But look, you need to understand that you can develop order kind of power. You can have an expertise, power that you can have power based it on your experience, based it on the level you deliver your projects, phases on your reputation. And dis can open a lot of doors because even if you don't have a very hierarchical people, respect you so you can navigate because people will be willing to support you because they know your reputation because they respect you.

But of course will develop this. It takes time because you need to build this based on the success of your projects. But it's very, very important. It's almost impossible for you to navigate on this very err, Kiko positions without support and without exercise and different kinds of power. Because if you come to this kind of organization, say, no, look, I have a badge here. I'm a project manager. We need to do that. The other person in the other side of the table tell you how come on, who are You?

What are you talking about? And then you will increase your resistance to your project. So you need to translate this power into something like a reference power. People need to go with you. You need to use your leadership skills and not necessarily your manager's skills to do that because if people are committed to do that, then people will drive in. And of course we will be reduced in this Friction because people will not see you ask someone to confront at some one to combat, but it's the opposite.

Did someone that I can help you because we can have both the benefit. So it's a very tricky and very soft. And remember most of the project managers are not aware of how to use the soft skills. And this is a great assets for you that are looking to become a very senior project manager. I think about that this week can see you next week in another five minutes PM. Podcast.

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Dealing with Friction related to the Functional Hierarchy and the Project

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