Whose Line is it Anyway – PM Vs HRM in organizational initiatives

Accountabilities and responsibilities go hand in hand. However, I think that there is a fine line of distinction between the two. Accountabilities are the tasks performed by a person out of his job profile, and responsibilities are obligations for which he is accountable. This distinct line of difference is experienced between Project Management and Human Resource Management roles too.

Project Management includes developing a vision, taking proactive decisions and understanding the diversity in training. Project management is a discipline of planning, organizing, securing and managing resources for a specific task and brings about its completion with Excellency, while human resources management concentrates on integrating decisions about people with decisions about the results an organization is trying to obtain. HR’s primary roles have been to ensure compliance with laws, rules, and regulations. Although this is still, and will always be, a necessary function, many recent developments have led to a strong emphasis on results. Even the organizational initiatives these days demonstrate the value of human resources management

With the trend of more and more HR executives beginning to earn a seat at the management table, HR is becoming more of counseling and involved in day-to-day management activities. Nevertheless, there is still a long way to go if HR is to become a strategic partner at all levels.

Lack of strategic partnerships is one of the reasons why so many organizational development initiatives fail. Through organizational initiatives, HR tries building its own internal competencies to deal with organizational issues, educate itself on program missions, and find ways to offer creative and innovative solutions to organization wide issues, than going on a standard approach of executing their responsibilities.

In the rush for creativity and innovation, the most critical piece, to take into account how change affects the organization's people, is often forgotten. Studies show that nearly 75 percent of all organizational change programmes fail because they don't create the necessary grounds well of support among employees.

Most often, the change brought in by the initiatives, is not welcomed immediately. Processes, Technology and People are the 3 key elements which drive and are affected by the initiatives. People are the most important of these elements, as change distracts and disturbs the balance of human brains. From the outset of any initiative, people must recognise and buy into the need for change. This is where HRM should take help of the Project Management Leaders and recognize that an organization cannot successfully adopt change unless these leaders understand, support the reasons for creating the change, align their people to create a compelling vision of the future state and continually communicate it.

While implementing the changes, HRM can also borrow a leaf from Project management, to identify and engage the resources for executing the change. A strategy should be developed in conjunction with the people who are impacted and the ones who will be executing it. This will enable the work force to be well prepared to participate in the development and implementation of new processes and technology, and the implementation should essentially be a monitoring activity for leaders.

However, most organizations spend the majority of their time in mandating the implementation of the change and don't adequately address their people's role in change. In such instances, successful change adoption rarely occurs. Project managers, functional and non-functional should be held responsible for reiterating the change mission through ongoing communications. Management should also use E-mails, project milestone commemorations, conversations and other channels consistently to remind people why they are expending their hard work on implementing a change.

Idealness in IT: Perfection, the need of the hour

As everyone else, the Information Technology (IT) world too thinks of idealness, something that is perfect or closest to perfection, as something that exists only as a concept. Idealness in IT is highly desirable but isn't it possible for us to achieve? World, life, power, knowledge and everything in life are essential and are capable of perfection.

It does not matter what we do and how many things we are involved in, what matters is how PERFECT we are in even one of them. Perfection in any one of the skills or capacities we possess will help us cross the border. We can see ourselves in the next zone if we take one thing at a time and perfect it. It enables one to see the result, gives self-confidence, gives birth to optimism and eventually to a different individual.

Every time I performed an activity, I conceived that it requires energy, interest, skill, attention, concentration, experience and perfection. When all of these aggregate, the result is always good. Even small perfection can bring great results. Flawlessness in any work is a common expectation across any duty performed in this world. I believe that perfecting a work down to the minutest details attracts positive life response. When the goal is high accomplishment, the very best method is to make every small act as perfect as possible. It is a method that brings a much greater result, much sooner.

Perfection comes with practice. For example, punctuality is perfection in time, which is practiced and measured over a period. The majority of perfection is attained in the first 70-80% of completing the task. The remaining 20-30% percent is achieved through what one thinks as improvement. But certainly it is the latter that makes a great difference.

Perfection can be achieved in three steps. The first step is to start with the right plans. Just as we build a building or make a car, we need to have a good set of plans. They must be accurate, easy for the workforce to understand and easy to repeat. Repeatability and reproducibility is another aspect of perfection in IT. The third step in perfection is to correct the previous mistakes and prevent defects from occurring again. Mistakes are common but repeated mistakes are a sin. No present work will move even an inch if past lapses are left uncorrected. This is similar to Deming / Shewhart Cycle or PDCA (Plan, Do it, Check and Act) cycle.

It may sound fancy, but it is very true that Six Sigma is nothing more than a measure of quality that strives for near perfection. It is a disciplined, data-driven approach to eliminate defects and rework in any process. The aim is to reduce defects, or errors, to no more than six standard deviations from the mean. To put numbers to it, in order to achieve Six Sigma-level quality, a process will have no more than 3.4 defects per million. Like wise, other quality processes such as Quality Circles, TQM and Kaizen work towards perfection by concentrating on Team based process improvements. Process Capability and Design of Experiments (DOE) have come to the fore in Six Sigma. Combining Control charts, Value Analysis and ISO/QS9000 techniques with Six Sigma can be a more powerful process perfection methodology.

Idealness can be attained with well defined quality processes. To me, Quality, especially in reference to IT, is to express the real ideas of the business in the act or work. It is only when something is rubbish, of poor quality and not worth its value, stakeholders take notice, start to complain, and all attention is drawn towards the mediocrity of the service or product. Often my requirements for quality fall on deaf ears; projects get revised and rewritten many times before they meet my exacting standards. People have even blamed me for having high expectations and termed as not a team man. Such people never had the visibility of the burned hours of top management time in the review and revision process – time that could have been used to lead the company.

The biggest key to succeed upon idealness is having the support of upper management. If they don't think it is necessary to perfect processes to achieve idealness, the initiative will fail. Next is to engage the right people in the process. If we don't have buy-in from the people who actually touch the process, it will be harder to get them to accept the changes proposed. It is also important to practice with smaller achievable projects to build the momentum. It's much easier to perfect a small job and get some quick success than to try to fix a huge process all at once. Together, we got to keep up the enthusiasm and optimism for idealness to be successful in the long run.

Facing the client: Should we bend till we break

Often on projects, I find myself focusing on a very common subject - facing the client. Client interactions can be nerve-wrecking as had been the case for some of my colleagues, including a couple of seniors. But it doesn't have to be like this always. I experience enlightment with each and every customer, internal or external, that I communicate with. I always feel it is a chance to strengthen the relationship. Relationships are still the cornerstone of any service-based business. It’s much nicer to work with jovial clients as opposed to clients who feel they are unable to communicate their thoughts properly.

Clients are primary to the process in the service industries. As an IT service provider, I feel that, we just implement the vision and ideas of the client. When the client asks for opinions and direction we may give some input, but it is ultimately for the client to make decisions. We should not underestimate and tell the clients what they should do. This happens with most organizations dealing with the FTO (First Time Outsourcing) clients, thinking that the clients are not knowledgeable in the project management aspects. Some of the large clients allow us to educate them about the value we can provide. But it is not the case always. Most times, we end up dumping our processes on the clients, only to find later that the clients had better processes than ours. We also fall into an easy trap trying to impress clients with our promises of a super-fast turn around instead of our capability. Don't give the client the absolute best-case scenario when discussing a project. Most of the Clients would be fine if they were just told that it would take the necessary time. But by promising the project in lesser time and failing to deliver, the future trust is lost with the client. Words are cheap and clients who have been in business for any length of time know that.

We need to be humble with the clients and understand that humility will only set us apart from the rest. Being Indians, humility comes quite naturally to us. But how far we need to be humble is a question to be answered. Client interaction is important as it could make or break a business and the best way to ensure that is by communicating effectively. Clients appreciate honesty which is often forgotten when being humble. The hardest lesson to learn in client interaction is learning when to state our opinion. If the client is wrong about something, do not hesitate to say so, along with a solution to go with it spontaneously. There’s no sense in pointing out an error only to not have an effective plan of action. Develop plans that are best suited for the clients. When identifying an issue, we should keep its criticality in context. Managers and business leaders do not appreciate drama, and overreacting can hurt our credibility and rapport with critical business contacts. Sticking to the facts can help keep situations from spinning out of control. Do a thorough client diagnostic evaluation and understand what we are doing well and how we might be falling short for them. This will increase the client experience with us. Do not shoot down any idea from the client, only to have nothing to patch it up with. Be ready to admit too when we are wrong should the client call us on something. Put your self in the client’s shoes to be able to identify and understand their problems.

Clients deserve respect for their expertise. Working collaboratively with clients typically achieves the best results. When interacting with a client, we should inject our personality into the conversation and project. If we are acting contrived, the client will come to know about it. Be genuine, by displaying the passion for work, the client will share their enthusiasm as well. In most cases, clients are proud of what they do, and they are excited to share the details of their work. Expressing interest can elicit valuable information and enhance client relationships. Having informal meetings outside of formal meetings with the client can really help our status as their trusted advisor. With informal meetings, be careful not to become too casual with the client; remember they are still the client. Client interaction should be characterized by quality and transparency, with defined and adhered accountability and responsibility.

The most important problem that clients face with the IT services is not talent or skill but communication, and that too written. Clear and concise writing is the foundation to effective communications. Be willing to email clients even when it seems a bit redundant or unnecessary. Always be reachable since if the Clients can’t get in touch with us, their helplessness increases exponentially. Answer emails to the client quickly. Assumptions can cause major problems, especially in a world where so many decisions are made by email. Make liberal use of lists, inline email responses, and reiterations of instructions. But all business can’t be conducted by email. This is where phone calls will help. Misunderstandings are always easier and faster to resolve via phone. Verbal communication creates a better "human relationship" than email does. And that is why I always prefer and suggest using both the channels – email followed by a phone call or phone call followed by an email.

Other basic things that can improve the client relationship include:
o Be honest and sincere to establish visibility and creditability so that there is enough trust for the purchase to happen.
o Be punctual, this signals that we value Client’s time the same way they do.
o Engage with the Client more often and make them feel that you really care.
o Dress formally. Dress to either the client’s standards, or your company's standards. With an increase in the number of businesses who operate in a casual work environment, standing out as well dressed can be a big bonus for you.
o Enhance listening skills to make sense of and understand what the client is saying.
o Always treat clients with courtesy.
o Reply speedily. Keep your clients abreast of important, complicated changes in strategy or timetables with regularly scheduled conference calls.
o Keep a watch on the body language

Also be aware of the Don’t’s
o Talking only about one self
o Revealing too much
o Not being one self

With so many factors to consider, how does one move forward without being overwhelmed with the complexity of client interaction? The starting point for such an approach is by giving careful consideration to the assumptions and beliefs that are embedded in our understandings and goals of our encounter with the client. Developing cultural knowledge, skills in understanding client communication methods, and an awareness and acceptance of the dynamic variety of people and populations we work with are all crucial components of facing the client. The right balance between humility and honesty, transparency and sincerity will give us the flexibility in any relationship without reaching the threshold of breaking.