Building Leadership Skills:Developing and Leading

ProjectsInstructor:

Pat Wagnerpat@pattern.com

An Infopeople Workshop

December 2006

This Workshop Is Brought to You By the Infopeople Project

Infopeople is a federally-funded grant project supported by the California State Library. It provides a wide variety of training to California libraries. Infopeople workshops are offered around the state and are open registration on a first-come, first-served basis.

For a complete list of workshops, and for other information about the project, go to the Infopeople website at infopeople.org.

Introductions

• Name

• Library

• Position

• Your purpose in coming to this class on leadership and project management

Workshop Overview

• Introduction to project leadership

• The organization map

• The project planning model

• Benchmarks for success

• Why projects fail

Leading Projects

Workshop Success

• Evolve your skills

• Apply the “reasonable” test

• Use issues that are real for you today

• Find a buddy at work

Questions for the Group

• What constitutes a project?

• What constitutes project success?

What is a Project?

• Personal time management

• Short term projects

• Ongoing projects

• Special projects

What is Project Success?

• The better future

– for the individual library user

(relevance)

– for the community or institution

– for the library employee

– for the profession

Project Benchmarks:

• Achieve strategic goals

• Everyone is treated well

• Parameters are observed

– time

– resources

– quality

Exercise #1

What Contributes to Project

Leadership Success?

The Organizational Map

• Three points of view: roles• Based on time and scope• Each role is equally important• We play all three roles

Organizational Roles

• Task : React– immediate response

• Management: Pause– coordinate, communicate

• Leadership: Anticipate– risk, influence, and the future

Blind Spots

• Task : Short time horizon– autonomy “bug”, project “creep”

• Management: Bureaucratic freeze– micromanagement, project “choke”

• Leadership: Lone eagle– loose cannon, elitism

Typical Tasks

• Professional and technical

– Reference, cataloging

– Tech services, circulation

• Library user interaction

• Hands on, immediate

Typical Management

• Earn trust and respect

• Resource allocation

• Coordination

• Oversight and supervision

• Bigger picture

Typical Leadership

• Mission and vision

• The compelling future

• Two years out

• Politics

• Biggest picture

How Do You Spend Time?

Using the letters “T”, “M” and “L”,

please rate the items from the list

you wrote earlier.

Question for the Group

What distracts us from our leadership role when we are managing projects?

Question for the Group

Why is the leadership role difficult?

Exercise #2

Leadership Approaches

What is Governance?

• Who makes decisions?

• What decisions does that person or group make?

• How do they make decisions?

Project Governance

• Seek input from everyone.

• Document and communicate decisions.

• Execute the plan.

• Take responsibility and hold ourselves accountable.

• Give and take feedback.

Exercise #3

How Well Does Your Library Support

Good Project Governance?

Planning to Plan

• What are the job descriptions?

• What are the checkpoints?

• How much time do we need?

• How do we coordinate with others?

• How do we manage conflicts?

Exercise #4

How Do We Plan for Project Success?

Benchmarks for Success•

• Descriptive Benchmarks– what we see, hear, do

• Measurable Benchmarks– what we can count and measure

• Strategic Benchmarks– how we impact goals, mission, vision

Descriptive Benchmarks

• Sensory-specific detail

• Physical evidence

• What we can see

• What we can hear

• What we and others do

Measurable Benchmarks

• Time: deadlines, length of time

• Size: measure, change (big, small)

• Location: specific place

• Number: count, change (more, less)

Strategic Benchmarks

• The hardest to achieve

• Can take years to identify

• Tied to the strategic plan

• Significant change or impact

• Bottom line: the library user

Exercise #5

How Do We Use Benchmarks to

Create Criteria for Project Success?

The Project Triangle

• Do you want it good?

• Do you want it cheap?

• Do you want it fast?

Question for the Group

What are examples of things you

prefer good, cheap, or fast?

Three Bottom Lines

• Avoid one-bottom-line thinking

– perfectionism

– false economy

– false productivity

Project Priorities

• Everyone needs to know

• Agreed-upon for every project

• Priorities support consistent choices

Project Ratios

• Everything can’t be a “10”

• Shorthand for discussing ratios

• Creates project expectations

Project Expectations

• What are the goals, sorted by priority?

• What are the parameters?

– Quality, time, resources, legal

– Civility: how we treat each other

Exercise #6

How Can We Use the Project Triangle

to Communicate Expectations?

Exercise #7

What is Your Project Readiness

Score?

Exercise #8

How Can You Prevent Project

Failure?

Your First Step

What will you do to apply leadership

skills to your next project?

The Early Bird…