PARADIGM SHIFT
Improve productivity and overall team performance
Are you missing the value of stories?
DrivingSpringchange2022
Creating a culture of accountability
To program or not program?to
Simple changes can lead to a sustainable future
MessageContentsfromtheCEO 05 In the news 06 Thought leadership To program or not to program? 08 Are project managers missing the key value of storytelling? 12 Leadership Leading through change 16 A case of reverse knowledge transfer 18 Creating a culture of accountability in the workplace 22 Improving long-term water security through partnerships 26 Technical skills Effective project management practice articulation 30 Fellows forum Reflecting on a long career and 20 years with the AIPM 34 Current events Upcoming AIPM events 37 Paradigm Shift is published quarterly. Calls for articles for the next edition will be made approximately 45 days before publication. Please see the back page for more details on how you can feature in our next edition. Interested in contributing to the next edition? Paradigm Shift, Spring 2022 Editor/Content Marketing Manager Helen O’Neill Writer/Digital Marketing Coordinator James Pettaras Designer Gray Design Group Contributors Geoff de Jongh MAIPM CPPE Dr Paul Steinfort FAIPM Sid Gokani Dr Marco Feris MAIPM Klaus Peter Stolzmann Prof Rodney J Clarke Jo SusanHarrisonKitching Matt Stevens communications@aipm.com.au © Australian Institute of Project Management 2 3Paradigm Shift: Driving change | Spring 2022
Enjoy reading,
As organisations are being called upon to deliver more and more projects and to drive change in the face of turbulent market conditions, delivering projects under a program or portfolio structure is steadily gaining momentum, as well as the need for more robust change management practices. One of our articles this issue questions ‘to program or not to program?’ Another delves into storytelling, and the simple changes that can be made when planning and communicating your projects.
Sid Gokani MBA GAICD
Here at the Australian Institute of Project Management, we have been undergoing a number of changes, as you would have noticed upon turning the first few pages of Paradigm Shift. Behind the new branding and magazine design is the Strategic Plan, which
CEO Australian Institute of Management
As change has become a constant in our lives, the ability to drive change is now a critical part of leadership. As project managers and directors, you have become change makers at the forefront of executing and enabling the change. It’s an exciting time, but we know also a challenging time, as you navigate the supply chain issues, rising costs, and skills shortage.
4 5Paradigm Shift: Driving change | Spring 2022 Learn more > Register > Register > Lead your projects and organisation to success Project leadership workshop series Develop your leadership skills with an upcoming workshop Foundations of Project Leadership 18 and 25 October 2022 Influencing in Project Leadership 25 November and 2 December 2022
aims to drive sustainable growth and market expansion to ensure that we are engaging project leaders across demographics, career stages, and industry sectors. You can read more about our transformation, which includes many other changes, on page 16.
As well as the design of Paradigm Shift, we are striving to continuously improve the content. We would love to hear your feedback or ideas for future issues; you can contact the team via communications@aipm.com.au.
fromMessagethe CEO
PM Forum
Quiet quitting is the latest workplace trend amongst millennials, which has arisen as a resistance to demanding jobs, where employees are often encouraged to work overtime and long hours, favouring the prioritisation of mental health and wellbeing. The trend has little to do with resigning, but instead ‘quitting’ the idea of going above and beyond.
Speakers
Ray Paulk Chief Executive Officer ProjectAI Dr Charlotte Marra Partner, Cloud Engineering Deloitte Consulting Sydney
Changing the face of project leadership
Climate change targets to become law
Climate change has been at the forefront of the global project landscape. The US recently passed an A$530bn climate bill as part of the inflation reduction act. With the precedent set by this global superpower, what does this mean for Australia? The House of Representatives passed a bill entailing a 43% cut in greenhouse gas emissions below 2005 levels by 2030, reduced to ‘net-zero’ by 2050. While this bill is yet to clear the Senate, it leads to an important discussion that needs to be had between the government and project leaders. How do we adapt projects even further to limit environment impact?
Rapid progress has been made in the development of a 300MW solar plant in South Australia, developed by Photon Energy. The plant has received Crown Sponsorship from the South Australian government. It features the highest
While workers are quiet quitting, ‘quiet firing’ is also said to be occurring. It refers to managers placing un-sustainable stress on certain employees, with the hope they eventually quit. Unlike the trend of quiet quitting, experts have warned this toxic management style has been around for many years, yet has only come to light recently as more and more discussions surrounding working conditions have taken place.
In the news
World’s biggest solar and storage project on track
storage capacity globally (3.6GWh) and uses Australian developed technology by RayGen. However, this large-scale capacity may soon be overtaken by an upcoming solar project in the Northern Territory, featuring 20GW of solar PV and up to 42GWh of battery storage. With the rapid development of record-breaking solar projects, is Australia positioning itself as the global leader in solar plants?
The rising trend of ‘quiet quitting’
7Paradigm Shift: Driving change | Spring 20226 Learn more > 28 October 2022 | Zinc, Melbourne
Here are some of the questions and considerations that should be used to evaluate whether to tackle projects individually or collectively in a program management structure.
Ensure
To program or not to program?
• Do projects have a common funding source or the same resource pool?
• Are the projects to be delivered at common sites/locations?
• Rigorous safety and environmental management are implemented across many small projects.
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• Costs are reduced through economies of scale.
While combining projects into a program can generate a lot of value, this approach should only be applied under the right circumstances. If done incorrectly, or for the wrong reasons, elevating to a program level can erode our ability to achieve some of the very benefits it is intended to generate.
Save
• Consistent and efficient reporting for better overall insight into status and risk.
Value levers
• Cashflow can be balanced across multiple projects.
Test the relationship: what is common, what is unique?
As organisations are being called upon to deliver more and more projects with the same staffing levels, delivering projects under a programmatic approach is steadily gaining momentum. Geoff de Jongh looks at how success can be achieved by elevating individual projects to a nationalised or state-based program of works.
The Standard for Program Management –Second Edition defines a program as a ‘a group of related projects managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits and control not available from managing them individually’. The likelihood that benefits will be realised is dependent on the strength of the relationship between the individual projects.
Thought leadership
Grouping similar projects by their type or geography has many benefits and RPS has recently successfully delivered several large programs of works, such as our work with Defence on PFAS investigation and remediation, the Navy Capability Infrastructure Sub Program or the Advancing Clean Energy Schools (ACES) program in Queensland.
• Will each initiative progress through the same approvals process?
• Opportunities are there to balance and share resources across multiple projects.
By Geoff de Jongh MAIPM CPPE
• Approvals can be streamlined across multiple projects saving significant time and effort.
• Are there common stakeholders and sponsors?
• Will combining the design/construction of elements lead to cost savings through integration of functions or economies of scale?
Treating individual projects as a collective can deliver benefits across all three of the value levers; to save, create, and ensure.
• Better project outcomes are available through leveraging opportunities and relationships with other related projects.
• Efficiencies are generated for the client by reducing their workload through the engagement of external program and project managers with specialist skills.
• Is one project reliant on the delivery of another?
Create
4. Delivery strategies
Low level of control
High level of control
Once the decision is made to elevate individual projects to be delivered as a program, another series of questions need to be asked. What structures and mechanisms can be placed around the program to ensure all our levers are working throughout the program lifecycle?
Supportive Controlling Directive 10 11Paradigm Shift: Driving change | Spring 2022
1. Program design and authority
If the answer to more than one of these questions is ‘yes’, then consideration should be given to combining the projects into a program. If the answers are mostly ‘no’ then combining into a program may create additional work for no real benefit.
Full direction over the projects
Directly manages the projects
• In what part of the delivery team should the program management office (PMO) function reside?
RequireEnforcerulesrulescompliance
• Should this stay within the client’s organisation, be contracted to the external client-side project manager (if the same company is appointed across all projects), or be contracted to an independent program manager?
• What resourcing is required for the program’s management, and what are the roles and responsibilities of the PMO versus the project management teams?
Supplies templates Provides resources and training Provides tools and systems
• How should the works be designed and constructed?
• Can economies of scale and valuefor-money be realised by combining design and construction under a single firm/bulk procurement or are project elements too disparate in terms of size, location, type, or timeframe?
2. Resourcing
• How can we ensure roles, responsibilities, and capabilities are clearly defined so that the PMO and project teams do not work at crosspurposes and erode our save, create, and ensure value levers?
3. Support systems
• What tools do we need to support the implementation of disciplined program and project controls? A well-delivered program relies on accurate tracking and reporting of each individual project’s performance across key measures such as schedule, cost, risk, and safety; coordinated and collated at the program level.
Determining the role your PMO should play (source: Geoff de Jongh)
While there is certainly no ‘one size fits all’ solution to program delivery and management, when we evaluate and ask the right questions at the beginning, combining individual initiatives in a program can offer real benefits for those looking to save money and time, create opportunities, and ensure quality.
Medium level of control Set from projects
• How can we ensure we have adequate insight across programs that may incorporate projects across many sites or jurisdictions?
Approving role
In structure lies strength
Geoff de Jongh MAIPM CPPE is an Executive General Manager in RPS’ Project Management Division with over 20 years’ of project management experience, for clients such as Department of Defence, Qantas, and Airservices Australia
Here are four of the key areas we consider when tackling this question for our clients.
Combining projects and programs even further into a portfolio can offer further benefits. However, this needs to be considered against the organisation’s strategic objectives, ensuring that the right projects and programs are prioritised over others.
• What role should the PMO ultimately play? Is it a support and guidance mechanism or is it a direction and control body? The answer may be directed by the client and nature of the work. For example, a controlling or directing PMO will have more accountability for individual project outcomes than a PMO that is in more of a supportive role.
Storytelling has a lot of power, because stories are fundamental to the way we process and experience life.
A combination of traditional storytelling and adaptable project management is required to be successful. The quote, “the more things change, the more they stay the same,” (Les Guêpes, January 1849) springs to Themind.keypoint here is that the project plans are professional, practical, and achievable, whereas stories can be fiction dressed up as fact. Just think of the way governments or
In the case of projects, stories can clarify understanding in a practical, agile way.
By Dr Paul Steinfort FAIPM Room for growth
Stories are an underutilised way to effectively transmit project information and values, as mentioned in the Autumn 2021 edition of Paradigm Shift. Storytelling captures and holds attention, something that ignites our curiosity and imagination. It can impact knowledge and either confirm or shift dominant paradigms.
13Paradigm Shift: Driving change | Spring 202212
Are project managers missing the key value of storytelling?
organisations have related project stories to the community. If the factual reality of professional project plans leads to a great story being told, then the project would have a much greater chance of success.
If project plans aren’t worked out professionally and communicated effectively, they can be misleading to stakeholders and cause project failures. Dr Paul Steinfort says that simple changes to your project plan in how you frame stories can lead to significantly more successful outcomes and sustainable futures.
As sad as it is, project failures are common. According to the AIPM/KPMG project management survey report in 2021, 50% of respondents indicated that their project failed to consistently achieve what they set out to achieve, and 70% of organisations had suffered at least one project failure in the prior 12 months. Examples of this are not hard to find either, with a recent global ABC News research study reporting that billions of dollars are wasted on infrastructure projects because of insufficient communication and planning, bureaucracy, and the failure to engage good staff.
Thought leadership
Many large companies, including Microsoft (via Microsoft Project) are using agile processes to assist with storytelling. The flow chart below is from the Microsoft Project Users Group (MPUG) website where Satya Narayan Dash shows stories can have a key place in projects. Atlassian also provide Agile project planning
tools to enable more effective project communication through project stories. Climate change activist, Mike CannonBrookes, co-CEO and co-Founder, of Atlassian who promotes agile storyline applications featured in the news recently with great stories that proved telling.
Story Breakdown Structure (source: Stories about Stories in Agile Development – Satya Narayan Dash, Microsoft Project Users Group)
Sustainable project cycle
Utilising storytelling
“The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values, and agenda of an entire generation that is to come,” said Steve Jobs.
Project managers can make sustainable change by first engaging with effective and proven project planning techniques to ‘reflect’, ‘plan’, ‘do’, and ‘review’, as achieved
The agile way
Communication is the toughest part of the project
This then drives sustainable outcomes, maximising value, minimising project time, cost, and resources, achieving sustainable project management with best value deliverables in a timely and least risky way.
• ‘what’ goal to deliver the core value(s) for the key stakeholders
Due to its visual nature, the WBS is a very effective communication tool used by managers to plan the project and relate narratives for the project.
Narrative Elements for Project Management Story (source: PSA Project)
• Outcome 1 is the ‘plot’, which is about learning, and growth being informed through ‘chronology’ (or timelines) and the ‘narrative’ by the project plan WBS and the risks of the project.
By engaging in factual narratives for all your projects through an effective WBS scope, all those involved can then understand and help drive the project.
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• ‘how’ to deliver sustainable results.
The power of the work breakdown structure
The stories, narrative, and inspiration come from the frameworks or processes that we apply in planning the scope, engaging with all range of stakeholders to plan, monitor, evaluate, and complete projects.
It has the same structure as the components of storytelling, which can be seen in the flow charts:
• Outcome 2 is the ‘characters’, the key stakeholders’ perception of the project who are needing identification of them and their core values. Then engaging with the stakeholders who power the project’s success and sustainable futures, enabling what can work best in their community. As vital information is recognised, the narrative of the project plan is adapted.
by the PSA Project cycle, regularly monitoring the ‘what’, ‘who’, ‘why’, and ‘how’. Focus on:
• ‘why’ do this project and is it going to achieve best value outcomes?
storylines to communicate most effectively with all stakeholders. Those stories and the stagewise narratives engage understanding, credibility, and commitment to achieve the best value outcomes for all types of programs to projects, in all environments.
Stakeholders will relate positively to, engage effectively with, and even be inspired by stories that are brought to life using that key aspect of scope in the work breakdown structure (WBS).
Dr Paul Steinfort AM PhD FAIPM is the founder and managing director of PSA Project, and has over 50 years’ of experience in successful project management locally and globally.
Final thoughts
That positive momentum is then grown throughout the project life cycle through constant monitoring and resolution for continuous improvement.
Storylines – Components of Story (source: Beemgee.com)
Story Structure WBS (source: PSA Project)
The key, in all of the above, is that the scope of the WBS framework can lead the stagewise and sage-wise narratives, core to project plans, to communicate the reality needed for project management to achieve sustainable futures.
The key positive in all of the above is that the WBS contains all core elements of
They say that communication is the toughest part of any project and that a picture paints a thousand words.
• ‘who’ are the key stakeholders and what are their agreed outcomes?
Project environments provide an ideal training ground for understanding the nature of change, the very many ways in which people respond to change, and the myriad of strategies to handle those responses.
3. They relish the challenge of tackling people issues arising from that disruption, and they are adept at reading people and the many ways that they react to disruption.
Business leaders need to be adept at navigating change. This change sometimes arises from an ambitious agenda that is set for the organisation by its leaders, and
The first step in this transformation is a refresh of the AIPM brand and a relaunch of our website, which occurred in August.
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territory level engagement with members, government, and industry bodies, and driving the project management profession forward across Australia.
Going forward we are changing the composition of councils so that we have additional clearly defined roles, with areas of focus including marketing, events, and organisation partnerships. We will also appoint councillors through an interview and selection process conducted by a panel of existing councillors, rather than through a member election.
4. Above all, they are great communicators.
Leading through significant change that is complex, disruptive, and ground-breaking requires resilience and specific skills.
often driven by the changing dynamics of the marketplace. There is no better demonstration of this than the recent pandemic, market disruption, and subsequent volatility in economic conditions.
In my observation of great change leaders, these are just some of the attributes that stand out.
Leadership
Later into my career as a project manager, I realised that what I was really enjoying was the change outcomes that we were delivering, and the people issues that we were solving along the way.
Our Chapter Councillors, led by a Chapter President in each state and territory, play an important role in supporting the AIPM in achieving its goals, driving state and
On the subject of change, it would be remis of me not to mention the transformation that is currently taking place at the AIPM. In September 2021, the AIPM Board approved a new Strategic Plan, with the aim of driving sustainable growth of the AIPM and market
expansion to ensure that we are engaging project leaders across demographics, career stages, and industry sectors. Critical to achieving our objectives will be a progressive renewal of our products and services and a repositioning of the AIPM brand.
Leading through change
From my own experience as a systems engineer and business analyst early on in my career, I know how easy it is to become led by the technology rather than by business outcomes. Add to that, the challenge of bridging the language divide between IT solution experts and business sponsors and it is not surprising that solutions sometimes fall short of expectations.
2. They move away from a rigid and controlling approach to leading change, towards a more adaptable, responsive, and nuanced approach.
The new contemporary look and feel of our brand identity signals to the market that we are changing and enables us to extend the appeal of our brand to a wider audience.
The next step in the transformation is a fine-tuning of our business model.
1. They maintain a focus on the endgame and have the resilience to deal with the significant disruption that arises along the way.
Leading through change can achieve great outcomes when you can successfully take people on the change journey, but that takes adaptability and great communication, says the Australian Institute of Project Management’s (AIPM’s) CEO, Sid Gokani.
I learned a great deal from my colleagues in the airline industry, a sector prone to industry shocks and that is often the first to feel the pain of changing market conditions.
In making these changes, our aim is to build an effective team within each chapter with the right skills and motivations to drive each chapter forward, deliver value to members, be a voice for the profession, and to support the execution of the AIPM Strategic Plan. We will continue to appoint councillors from our member base, and members will continue to have a voice and be influential in shaping the future of AIPM.
AIPM is evolving and I feel optimistic about the change journey ahead of us.
In the development of a mission computer – a system supporting cargo handling, in-flight refuelling, search and rescue, forest fire fighting, amongst other missions – the headquarters had hired a traditional supplier of avionics systems to provide a X86 module, a double motherboard with two high speed processors.
A case of reverse knowledge transfer
When this crisis happened, the general manager and the program manager of the subsidiary identified an opportunity to increase its reputation by showing its ability to develop a complex project like the X86 module.
Problems for some, opportunities for others
This idea was not initially well accepted by many of the headquarters involved in this project. In their view, the subsidiary was known for developing software, but it was not prepared at the time to develop projects with his level of complexity.
there were key team members with significant experience in the development of other critical applications (e.g., electronic boards for industry automation). Cost overruns were acceptable, it could be absorbed later during its production, and there would be flexibility in adapting existing organisational processes as the subsidiary size is smaller than the headquarters. Finally, the subsidiary knew that the end customer (i.e., the Air Force) was interested in national technology.
After the critical design review (CDR), where scope changes are not allowed, the selected supplier decided to increase the price and to extend the deadline beyond what had been previously agreed. Extra costs could be absorbed, but delivery delays meant heavy fines.
The development of the X86 module
An unorthodox application of agile practices
b) develop an unorthodox plan able to deal with these technical, psychological, and political challenges.
By Dr Marco Feris MAIPM, Klaus Peter Stolzmann, and Prof Rodney J Clarke
The view in the subsidiary was opposite: The strong support from senior management would allow funding of this project and the removal of political issues and obstacles at headquarters. Moreover,
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With the plan in hand, a meeting was scheduled with the Air Force with the objective of showing what we intended to do in a very transparent way.
X86
Moreover, it should be developed in five months and be able to fly, but the headquarters usually took 12 months to develop similar projects. To complicate matters, they knew that the intermediate customer (i.e., the manufacturer of the aircraft) would view a change at this stage as a high risk to the aircraft’s development schedule.
This plan included a combination of agile practices with well-established milestones, to develop a product that follows the standards used for the certification of safety-critical avionic systems.
The plan included actions to motivate a skilled team to perform better than usual, such as frequent status meetings with all involved, and ad-hoc meetings with a small number of people to discuss issues in depth. module (source: AEL)
The first steps were to: a) hold a kick-off meeting, supported by senior management and former Air Force colonels
Leadership
In this article, Dr Marco Feris, Klaus Peter Stolzmann, and Prof Rodney J. Clarke describe how AEL Sistemas, the Brazilian subsidiary of Elbit Systems, went against the norm of exploiting the knowledge from its multinational headquarters, and significantly increased its level of autonomy, including the leadership of all national projects.
The decision to develop the X86 module from scratch in the subsidiary was taken due to the lack of options at the headquarters and the subsidiary’s willingness to accept this endeavour.
intuitive acquisition practices, and comprehensive stakeholder analysis to manage two customers and psychological aspects to motivate a skilled team to perform better than usual. Regardless of these difficulties, the X86 was delivered on-time, and the headquarters level of confidence with its subsidiary increased significantly.
3. The issues found during the project execution led to enhancement of internal processes.
set of electronic components that were not used because the design of the board changed during this process. This represented the purposeful generation of waste to compensate for the speed of development.
Unusual aspects included:
2. The careers of many professionals were leveraged: in 2021, headquarters requested the relocation of a large number of engineers to Israel for one year.
Dr Marco Feris MAIPM is the Program Director of the MSc Project Management and the Graduate Certificate in Project Leadership and Management at UOW, and was the program manager responsible for the development of X86. Klaus Peter Stolzmann is the Supply Chain Manager at AEL Sistemas, and Prof Rodney J Clarke, PhD, Docent i Informatik is Professor of Operations and Systems at the Faculty of Business and Law, UOW and Director of the Centre for Responsible Organisations and Practices (CROP).
It is important to highlight the tests carried out made through the Highly Accelerated Life Testing (HALT) and Highly Accelerated Stress Screening (HASS) chamber applied sudden temperature changes and vibration to eliminate design and production problems.
2. For critical items, such as a printed circuit board (PCB) that required 12 layers, the project manager requested to purchase them from more than one supplier. The first supplier to deliver the PCB solved the problem of deadline for this critical item.
How it’s changed the routine today
1. The subsidiary now leads all national projects (e.g., the development and production of the Wide Area Display – WAD for the Brazilian Air Force fighter Gripen NG).
1. Usually, the engineers design an electronic board and only when complete, would they generate the bill of materials, or ‘BOM’, i.e., the list of parts required to be purchased. However, the length of this process was incompatible with the aggressive delivery timeframe. The engineer delivered several preliminary BOMs during the process of board design. The project manager then delivered this list to the buyers. At the end, there was a
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Changes today are:
The development of this module was undertaken in much less time than development teams from the headquarters usually take. The project involved overcoming technical challenges and political issues that come from a scope change after the CDR. It consisted of an unorthodox approach involving counter-
Wide area display (WAD) in the fighter Gripen NG (source: AEL)
3. Because it is a military board, electronic components have more robust specifications, but this also reduces the number of available suppliers. To complicate matters, it was possible that customs may provision these components from abroad, in turn inducing delivery delays. As a result, some critical components were purchased twice, and the supplier was asked to send via regular post and via a private company. The first set of components solved the problem of deadline.
• expected standards for behaviour
Leadership
• people own their mistakes and learn from them.
Creating a culture of accountability in the workplace
If your team isn’t quite performing how you’d like, have you considered if lack of accountability could be an issue? If people aren’t taking ownership of decisions and results, things probably aren’t getting done. As a leader, that’s frustrating. But as you know, the buck always stops with you, and creating a culture of accountability in the workplace won’t happen without you.
• unclear expectations and priorities
Benefits of accountability
How to build a culture of accountability
• Trust: Instilling an accountable culture involves plenty of communication. Everyone relies on each other, and nobody shifts the blame for mistakes. Trust grows in the team and with management.
As a leader in your workplace, culture building is a responsibility that falls directly
1. Lead by example
• keep growing as a leader so you can motivate, influence, and inspire.
2. Set workplace expectations
• organisation’s mission, vision, and values
Having clearly defined standards lets employees know what’s expected of them. You can do this by defining and communicating the:
• rewards and benefits of meeting and exceeding expectations.
• consequences of not meeting expectations (without fear of punishment)
Having a culture of accountability can be a real game-changer. This article looks into how you can shape your organisation’s culture to improve productivity, creativity, trust, morale, and overall team performance.
• importance of their commitment to the expectations
• be a good role model
• low morale, low trust, and high turnover
• adjust your leadership style to suit the situation
Accountability is central to high-performing teams, but it’s a complex phenomenon. When there’s a culture of accountability in a workplace:
A lack of accountability at work can breed poor performance through:
• Productivity: people work better when they understand what’s required of them. They’ll be more engaged and committed to meeting their deadlines and goals.
• people at every level are personally committed to achieving their goals
Workplace accountability boosts productivity, creativity, trust, morale, and overall team performance.
• not taking responsibility and blaming others for mistakes
To encourage a culture of accountability, you’ll need to hold yourself accountable first. As a leader, you very much set the tone for performance and culture.
• all team members assume responsibility for their actions
• staff work together to solve problems creatively
• Creativity: Being accountable encourages team members to work together to solve problems. They’ll have the confidence to try new things and find innovative solutions.
If you’re always late for meetings, miss deadlines and avoid responsibility for your mistakes, others will follow your lead. If these aren’t behaviours you want in your team, you’ll need to change your own behaviour first by demonstrating exemplary leadership qualities:
To enable employee success, you need to explain the rules of the game.
Accountability at work – what is it? Definition of accountability in the workplace: Being accountable at work means taking responsibility for actions, decisions, tasks, and deadlines, and owning the results, whether good or bad.
Why is accountability important in the workplace?
Creating a culture of accountability in the workplace can have many upsides:
• job roles and responsibilities
• missed deadlines and unmet goals.
By Jo Harrison
22 23Paradigm Shift: Driving change | Spring 2022
• Morale: Employees are accountable to themselves, each other, management, and the business. They know what’s expected of them, communication is plentiful, and they’re rewarded for a job well done.
in your lap. Changing workplace culture takes time and effort, but if you’re looking to cultivate accountability, here are nine ideas to get you started:
• communicate often and engage with all stakeholders
• communicate any lessons learned along the way to prevent future occurrences.
When recruiting, prioritise cultural fit over skills. You can teach skills more easily than shifting deeply held values. Look out for the following traits:
• Be very specific and use examples, including explaining the impact of their action, whether good or bad.
Using project management technology like Asana, Monday.com, or Click-up keeps track of commitments and can be useful for monitoring progress and continually reinforcing your culture of accountability.
• accepting constructive feedback
Accountability in project management
It is critical to share an understanding and commitment to agreed roles and responsibilities, whether this is in a project environment or part of business as usual activities. When hierarchy is set aside and the focus is shifted to defining the most appropriate person accountable for specific work, efficiencies are enabled which also helps to support a culture of empowerment and shared ownership of final outcomes.
Jo Harrison is a copywriter who specialises in B2B, financial services, and project management content. Before launching her writing career, Jo was a project manager in the automotive industry and managed project teams in a boutique strategy consultancy.
• embracing learning opportunities
3. Establish clear goals
And even more so in certain industries, where the stakes are exceptionally high. Projects in sectors like defence, government, construction, and health can have life or death impacts, and a culture of accountability can help prevent mistakes that could have dire consequences.
• Do they want to learn and grow?
Examples of accountability in the workplace
Cultivating a culture of accountability in the workplace improves morale and performance and will help your team thrive. The Australian Institute of Project Management offers a range of professional development workshops. Take a look at the course outlines to find out how you can build skills and knowledge to help you shape a high-performance culture and confidently lead your organisation to success.
• Influencing in Project Leadership
• Create a culture of two-way feedback and provide safe opportunities to speak up about peer and management performance.
• Build trust with each member of your team, and be sure to deliver any negative feedback in private.
• Always frame negative feedback with positive intent and make it clear you genuinely want them to improve and grow.
• Ask their referees if they are responsive to feedback.
• proactively solving problems
• admit the mistake and never try to shift the blame
There are many ways people uphold a culture of accountability in their workplaces. Here are a few examples:
• being punctual.
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6. Give (and receive) feedback
5. Monitor progress
• Give feedback often, and look for opportunities to congratulate your team.
Giving and getting honest feedback can be a real challenge, but it’s an area you can work on. Many leadership courses include excellent training to boost feedback skills. Here are some feedback tips to consider:
• Do they care about doing great work?
Sophia Herdina Project Manager, People & Culture for Sydney Catholic Schools
see it’s okay to make mistakes, they’re more inclined to push boundaries and innovate. If mistakes happen, it’s good practice to:
• Foundations in Project Leadership Workshop
• SMART goal setting encourages accountability with goals that are Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Timely. You can extend this to set SMARTER goals that incorporate Evaluation and Revision of goals.
4. Use an accountability framework
• The OKR framework (Objective and Key Results) is good because it’s a collaborative approach to goal-setting encourages ownership at all levels of the organisation.
8. Hire the right people
• create a plan to resolve any fallout from the error
• Ask how they’ve overcome obstacles, solved problems, and asked for help in the past.
• Listen out for blaming mistakes or failures on others.
To perform to their fullest potential, people need to understand what’s expected of them and the big picture goal they’re working towards. Clear goals inspire people to work towards achieving them and make them want to stick around. Here are two of the more popular goal-setting methods you could use:
• owning responsibilities
Once your goals are set and the team understands their role, you’ll need to monitor progress carefully. Embedding regular team meetings, daily stand-ups or one-on-ones creates strong habits around accountability.
Accountability is important in every job, but it’s particularly central to the project profession. Holding yourself and your team accountable for the project outcome is core to the role.
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• helping colleagues meet their goals
7. Take responsibility for mistakes As a leader in your organisation, you need to demonstrate desired behaviours. Part of a culture of accountability is owning your mistakes and learning from them. When people
Accountability frameworks like RACI ensure that everyone involved in a project understands their role. People are designated as Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, or Informed and it clarifies exactly who is doing what, ultimately leading to better performance.
• sharing knowledge with others
Leadership
projects by expanding capability and capacity in both planning and delivery and moving away from transactional relationships to a more collaborative form of delivery.
The challenges
This can be a challenge whilst continuing to deliver projects, but feedback has shown that establishing systems and processes
On top of this, having embedded team members creates a cohesive team with a new identity. A period of team building and mobilisation; co-developed plans, procedures, innovative KPIs and ways of working; alongside some pilot projects, within an embedded team can enable the partnership to gather feedback and adapt.
Customers continue to expect quality water at an acceptable cost, driving water utilities to make responsible short-, medium- and long-term asset investment decisions.
It is important to focus on the issue of whether the team should take on the utility identity or create a new identity which is a sum of the parts.
Different cultures can bring different strengths and the diversity has certainly provided speed and flexibility in working within the disruption caused by COVID-19.
Aurecon has been able to draw insights as it partners with major utilities in Australia including Sydney Water, SA Water, Urban Utilities, WaterNSW, Yarra Valley Water, and Hunter Water. Whilst all these partnerships are slightly different, they are strongest when the partners have a common set of behaviours and a culture that together will define how the partnerships function.
makes people feel comfort and a sense of the same community.
Using the knowledge from the companies within a partnership allows support, tools, and processes to be developed and teams to adapt very quickly with positive stakeholder feedback on workshops over and above the traditional face to face in some instances.
Partnership models
Although the last three years has brought its own challenges, with people transitioning to working remotely, and more recently a hybrid model of working. Where partnerships have developed prior to this, the transition appears to have been easier, but a constant resetting of the culture is needed regardless.
Creating an impact
There are many challenges facing water utilities across the globe, but no less than the extreme weather events that the east coast of Australia has seen, especially in the last few years. In the face of this, making sure that assets serve future generations
Water utilities are facing the major challenge of delivering services on increasingly ageing infrastructure. Population growth, urban density, climate change patterns, demands on traditional water sources, and decarbonisation are the other external drivers that prompt water utilities in making a shift.
By Susan Kitching
The industry is moving towards partnership models to provide better value to their customers and communities by streamlining its supply chain, providing better efficiency and more insight into risks and opportunities.
A few water utilities partnerships have been formed globally and more recently in Australia and New Zealand. A whole system approach looks to help deliver corporate strategy outcomes and increasingly complex
Improving long-term water security through partnerships
With water utilities facing major challenges, the formation of partnerships has been successful for Aurecon as it has allowed them to leverage outside expertise to deliver capital works programmes more seamlessly, economically, and effectively. Susan Kitching describes what makes an effective partnership.
What makes a partnership successful?
A one-team approach
26 27Paradigm Shift: Driving change | Spring 2022
The enhancement to streamline this as the partnership develops and create a culture which picks up the best parts of all identities is the next step to this.
by keeping bills as low as possible is critical whilst leaving a positive environmental and human health legacy. Having partnerships throughout the asset lifecycle, including maintenance, rather than individual parts of CapEx (capital expenditure) projects can:
1. Culture is key to forming a team, but do you combine culture or take the sum of the parts?
• Allow learning over time to create better outcomes.
• Enable smarter decisions about economic systems and ensure that it can continue to sustain future generations.
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In addition, partnerships can flex and bridge projects to provide value to customers. Capacity to mobilise teams quickly, as well as the ability to look across projects and adapt to optimise solutions for customers has been a key strength of a partnership model.
• Allow for a focus on production of digital information to help measure and value operational impacts and dependencies.
• Make contextually informed decisions where everyone is working towards an asset-based outcome.
A lot of the feedback Aurecon gained through our partnerships experience pointed to a lack of access to tools and processes, and information. This has been heightened by remote working and the need to find documents and processes independently, particularly for those not within the embedded team. Provision of improved onboarding material, updated processes and better access to project dependent information is underway
Final thoughts
Partnerships will flourish when there is a sense of empowerment among all parties, transparency in communications, and the motivation to act a certain way – by building a culture of authenticity. In creating this environment, partnerships can drive change successfully and deliver on creating value-for-money, a greater customer, and community focus as well as leaving a legacy for the community and the organisations.
Conflict for people between their home organisation and the partnership is always a challenge to overcome, no matter how good the set-up of a partnership is. It is important to create a streamlining of admin which cannot be avoided (such as line management and goals) whilst trying to create one team.
2. Processes and tools create a sense of comfort in the team
What we have learnt
Susan Kitching is the Design Director for Water at Aurecon, and is the is the Planning Partner Services Lead and Treatment Planning Manager in Sydney Water’s Planning Partnership.
Deep dive feedback on partnerships and some general observations have led to a few key lessons learnt. Whilst partnerships are all delivered differently, this can help moving forward, especially as partnerships reach a second phase and drive towards continual improvement.
1. Definition: what is the exact practice, including what it is not.
6. Intended outcome: this is what a superior result looks like. Young people, in particular, want to know this.
10. Deadline: when is the practice execution needed? This dovetails into the monitoring of timeline practice adherence.
In creating this document of standardised methodology, short meetings of thought leaders of targeted areas are convened, and a working copy is generated. After each iteration, the cumulative document should circulate to staff for comments, additions, and edits. Of course, the result should be a virtual text for easy access and updating.
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5. Practice steps: a critical articulation of the process of completing the work, but does not fully cover all practice variables.
7. Cardinal sins: these are things not to do, i.e., the shortcuts and workarounds that lead to poor outcomes or disasters, which often are committed by the inexperienced or unknowing. This lists lessons learnt from others’ ‘scar tissue’.
Seymour ( Lean construction: The contribution of ethnography, Lean Construction Journal , 2013) asserts that engineers and those around them tend to answer the ‘what’ is to be done and not ‘how’ things come to be – defining the method. Project managers know that inefficient processes affect the bottom line, and even best practices can be improved. In addition, documenting practices allows for review for efficacy and better integration of the whole company system. Galbraith ( Organisation design: An information processing view , 1974) was the first of many management researchers to discover and offer evidence of outsized efficiency gains from integrating practices into an aligned system.
Effective project management practice articulation
8. Data needed: information is critical to all management decisions to be executed with quality.
Successful project management practice articulation must have two characteristics: it must be crystal clear, and it must align actions to produce overall efficacy. However, it is still a weak link in the project management chain of value, says Matt Stevens.
overall performance. It’s important as most people face personal challenges and resulting ups/downs during their career.
3. Primary responsible person: there is one person to facilitate the work and monitor its quality. This one person can and should delegate to those most qualified, but must see it to completion.
4. Supervisor: this superior ensures the quality and timeliness of the work. Additionally, they monitor the person for
By Matt Stevens
Successfully articulating and implementing company-standardised practices depend on several factors. This work could take weeks of periodic meetings for firms. I recommend that each of the 10 prompts guide the articulation of each practice (Stevens and Smolders, Understanding Australian Construction Contractors: a guide for emerging professionals , 2022).
2. Compelling business reason: this is essential to articulate. If the reason is weak, then the practice can be combined with another or even eliminated. In other words, if it does not add value, such as an extra unneeded report, it should be re-examined.
Creating a framework that guides flow, integration, and action is critical, i.e., who does what and when. I share two methodologies below that accomplish this: a Rummler-Brache Process Relationship Map and RACI Matrix.
Technical skills
9. Form needed: a form may or may not be required. Sometimes, ‘no form needed, use this page’ eliminates a form, which becomes a very healthy pruning.
Standardising, articulating, and assigning tasks, as stated by Demings (Out of the Crisis, MIT Center for Advanced Engineering Study, 1986) is not a novel idea. He asserted multiple positive effects should result from this structured articulation. However, the power of integration is a new challenge due to the increasing rate of change such as the heightened use of software and other labour-saving technology. Of course, better integration of all tasks will lessen operational inefficiencies, including prioritisation conflicts and the overwhelming of resources. Here are the improvements I have observed:
Articulating and integrating project management processes are needed now more than ever in our rapidly changing world. New environmental, social, and economic realities are emerging. Practice execution is never 100% on-time and complete; however, improvement in this metric will be noticeable quickly when chaos lessens, productivity elevates, and profits increase. It is important to note that processes connect employees with the work and each other. In project management, processes comprise a majority of a company’s economic engine. So, when its methodology is excellent in safety, quality, schedule, and cost practices, superior results should follow. Critically, periodic review, examination, and reintegration has many benefits including lessening operational risk during these changing times.
Meet TakeoffQuantity UnitDeterminePricing
Summary
further.
President I Department Manager C R, A Purchasing Manager Partial RACI Matrix Example (source: Steven’s Files)
ManagerDepartment
Validate warranty Help with complex Service work and estimate its cost
A RACI Matrix articulates needed roles and responsibilities across the organisation. R is responsibility, A is accountability, C is consultative, and I is informed. When these actions are taken, such as allocating unit pricing to the project manager – see below – efficacious decision-making should result. Of course, your organisation may have senior executives that need to be involved in varying ways so better outcomes result.
• Increased adherence to practices: both in timeliness and completeness. Studies have shown an outsized benefit of higher process compliance. For example, in the construction contracting industry practices, a 1% gain in timely completion results in a 2% increase in efficiency. Of course, if adherence is 1% less, then a 2% decrease is a likely outcome (increased chaos). In my career, I have seen both situations in projects and organisations.
Rummler-Brache Process Relationship Map
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• Systematised: the practices are documented virtually, represent ‘one version of the truth’, and can be harmonised with the software the firm uses.
Some practitioners will insert directional arrows to clarify task
• Training purposes: new employees have a good starting place to understand their practices and role. They can be expected to perform self-learning primarily and be effective more quickly with less rework (see Cardinal Sins) and fewer hours of on-the-job training from the project manager’s supervisor.
Matt Stevens PhD is a lecturer in the School of Engineering, Design and Built Environment at Western Sydney University.Articulating and integrating project processesmanagementareneeded now more than ever in our rapidly changing world.
by
• Ongoing mindfulness: at the end of every formal management and leadership meeting – five minutes might be used to review a single practice to re-emphasise its details and order. This never stops; this immersion is critical, and these constant reminders make practices ‘sticky’.
with Warranty Coordinator on complex warranty situations ServiceCustomer customercallphoneReceivefrom CustomerInterviews orwarrantydeterminetoService Technician Receive paperworkschedulejob Go informationandappointmenttocollect Return information to appropriate coordinator A Partial Rummler-Brache Process Relationship Map Example (source: Steven’s Files) EngagementCustomer
A Rummler-Brache Process Relationship Map communicates the process effectively. It is simple in its approach, representing ‘swim lanes’ of responsibilities (see table below), so know their project tasks, the order, and integration looking at their swim lane. relationships
employees
RACI Matrix
Congratulations on your 20th anniversary of being an AIPM Fellow. What is your favourite memory with the AIPM?
Without a doubt, people management skills and a high degree of patience are essential. Whether it be negotiating EBA’s (enterprise bargaining agreements), communicating with stakeholders, or employing the right person for the right role, people drive the project’s culture.
Fellows forum
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How has the AIPM helped you at different stages of your career?
What are some of the most important skills needed to manage large-scale projects?
The first thing we did was take on all the existing staff and pay them any money owed that they had not received from their previous employer. By doing this, we gained some credibility and trust with both the union and the workers. From there, it was finding a suitable mechanical contractor that had a large workforce, experienced enough to be able to work the extra hours required to bring the project back on schedule. As luck would have it, we found one, and I facilitated the negotiation of a new contract between the builder and the new mechanical contractor, who also agreed to take on the employees from the previous contractor. By the end of the contract, the mechanical side was back to being
Reflecting on a long career and 20 years as an AIPM Fellow
As above, I cannot emphasise enough the importance of people management, clear communication, and cashflow. They sound easy, but you see so many projects getting it wrong from the start. I have been brought in on numerous occasions to fix up projects that have gotten into trouble, and nine times out of 10, the reason for the project’s failure was one of those items.
of a high standard, so to be included within that group of people is very humbling and appreciated. I also have fond memories of attending the AIPM Project Management Achievement Awards (PMAAs) dinner in Darwin, as I had a chance to catch up with many members I hadn’t seen for several years.
Jeff Rose FAIPM has a diverse portfolio that includes large-scale projects, work in remote areas, and overseeing major government projects. As a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM), Jeff Rose FAIPM reflects on his career as he celebrates his 20th anniversary.
It would have to be becoming a Fellow. I felt that the criteria and what people had to achieve to be granted Fellow status was
Without the right culture from the beginning, a project is set up for failure. The other skill is to let the people that you employ under you do their job. So many managers either end up micromanaging or try to do parts of the role of others.
The AIPM has helped me keep up with innovations and new methodologies across the industry and facilitated discussions that have challenged the norm. Hearing and reading many of the discussion threads on the AIPM open forum has also helped me understand and crystallise my thoughts on my own experiences. Attending as many AIPM events as I can is also vital, not only from a networking point of view, but due to their highly experienced speakers. The sharing of knowledge from these speakers really opens my eyes to other ways to achieve better project results and reduce risk.
The project profession has evolved over the decades, and we often talk about these changes, but what are some of the constants for you that have always remained?
One such project was a new largescale ice cream factory being built, during which the mechanical contractor went into receivership. By the time I arrived, the mechanical contract was 12 weeks behind the critical path. The builder should/would have known the subcontractor was in trouble just from their tender, which was way below in cost compared to any other provided and had the shortest duration. The builder was also having industrial relations issues at the time, and that was making productivity hard.
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The above description sounds simple, but for me personally, I can tell you my patience was severely tested and in the nine months I was involved, an average day was 14 hours, seven days a week. Looking back, it was pretty satisfying to pull that off despite the adversity faced.
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within only one week late. The builder, while not making their margin on the mechanical contract, did not lose much, given the circumstances.
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When I first started work, I was very ambitious and thought I knew more than I actually did.
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Working as the Alliance/Delivery Manager on the $650m Western Corridor Recycled Water Pipeline in Queensland was pretty special. That pipeline comprised of 104km of underground pipe, 1.8m in diameter, with 10 pumping stations, and seven concrete balance tanks of around 5ml. The pipeline passed under approximately 50 roads, railways, and major waterways, including twice under the Brisbane River.
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The reason it remains a highlight is that –given the challenge of a short time frame to complete the works, the fact that much of the land had still to be acquired, the running of four tunnel boring machines 24 hours a day, and having to bore under the Brisbane River twice – it was all relatively new to me experience-wise. Being able to pull it all together with the team was pretty special, but most of all, to this day, many of the people I worked with on that project have become close personal friends like no other.
What is the best advice you’re received as a project professional?
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What has been your career highlight to date?
Criticality of information security in projects and programs
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The pipeline construction also involved bulk earthworks, piling to support the building and tank constructions, as well as construction through heavily built-up areas. The Eastern Pipeline Alliance had, at its peak, over 650 people employed on the project.
RAAF Base East Sale (source: Jeff Rose)
My father pulled me aside one day and said, not once, but three times, “The more you learn, the more you realise how much you don’t know.
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Anyone who knew my father knew he was not one to waste words, so if he said something, you listened. If he said it more than once, there was a good reason. Those few words stuck with me, and to this day I reflect on that saying as it made me listen and learn.
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