Reasons to Use Consultants for L&D Project Management

featuring: David L., Senior Project Manager

What is project management?

It is definitely a lot of things. In order to meet expectations and dates, project managers should understand the culture of a company and the people who will help organize the project. Project Management is about serving a customer need and creating business results to support the company’s short- and long-term objectives.

Project management is a lot like life: you have to be able to balance expectations, people and company cultures. Project management is about relationships. It is about finding the right solutions -- and that requires having good problem-solving skills. And in order to solve problems, you have to be able to understand people and the culture of the organization.

Having an awareness of all of those attributes -- knowing how to balance expectations, people and company cultures -- and being able to come up with the right solutions isn’t something that can be taught. That part of project management is the "people" aspect: It is being able to come up with a balancing act of those attributes.

After that, it comes down to your project management skill set. Project Managers can come in at many stages of a project: you can come in at the beginning or in the middle when there hasn’t been much project management going on before your arrival. Being able to jump in and assess expectations, people and company culture is very important.

For example, I came in at one company that had multiple projects that were in various stages. In that instance, I had to be able to manage very different projects. Speaking with the different stakeholders and getting to a personal level helps you assess how things really are in a project. Getting to the relationship level opens doors to the information you need to move the project toward its goal.

Are there different levels of project management?

Absolutely. It is up to the company to determine the level of complexity required to manage a project. Just talking about the different stages of where you are going to put someone in a project is a topic in itself.

If you are putting in a project manager at the Envisioning Stage [the very beginning] of a project, you could probably afford to put in a less-experienced project manager. The less experienced project manager would take more time to review the goals and come up to speed on what to do to get the project moving. A more experienced project manager would likely know the right questions to ask from the get-go, and knowing which questions to ask is vital these days.

If you can ask the right questions and make staff meetings go faster, it expedites all the stages of the life cycle of a project -- and this faster pace pays off.

I think the level of experience and depth of life cycle experience is what the company determines when they ask for outside support for a project. Someone who is senior could pretty much manage any project because they have the people skills and know the right questions to ask. They know about stages of projects and can make plans that meet expectations and milestones.

Why do companies call in a consultant who specializes in project management?

You have to have certain skills to put together a project plan and a lot of SMEs [subject matter experts] may not have project management skills or the time required to focus on the project. It is all about the life cycle of a project -- a lot of people within an organization may not know the different project management methodologies that could be used to make a project successful.

Having someone come in fresh may give a new perspective on how to successfully accomplish the project. It also allows internal staff or subject matter experts to provide only the details needed and focus their main efforts on their core competencies, instead of something they were not hired for. I think that is why some companies hire an outside project manager.

Can you give me an example of when it was an advantage for a company to call you in to manage a project?

Every single time -- no, I am just pulling your leg. We do not need to mention company names, but I can tell you about this one project. It was very tough. The company was downsizing and there were a lot of disgruntled people. I was called in to put in a formal process into place that would help put our arms around the many moving parts.

The operations center had no documentation for how they ran their activities. We had to document every step of the operations of a very large group of people. We had to interview the employees who were going to be laid off, and then we had to hire and train the new employees. One difficulty, as you can imagine, is that people weren’t exactly cooperative. I arrived in the middle of the process, and there was no Envisioning Session. The company just advised me that we had to complete our documentation by x-date.

It came down to reverse engineering all due dates and putting together a team on the ground who may or may not know how to handle every situation. Most of our execution occurred during daily release meetings. We discussed personality types, issues, and best ways to handle each situation to get the info we needed. Now, this is not typically the project management skill one would use; but in this instance, it was needed. The style was flexible, adaptable, and situational. It allowed for adjusting to changes along the way.

When they brought me on board, I was able to quickly recognize the situation at hand. With input from their team, I was able to create a plan and put processes, templates and management tools in place for everyone involved to be able to attack and wrap our arms around the project.

Previous experiences really helped me with this project. There wasn’t an opportunity to plan out and execute every step in the project plan. We had to improvise, adjust and offer many solutions to every problem. In that manner, we were able to meet all dates and exceed this client's expectations.

When you have certain dynamics, you cannot always follow protocol. However, that is the reality of some projects, and experience helps you know how to handle those situations.

It might be worthwhile to mention that I just happen to have Six Sigma experience under my belt. Even if a company isn’t downsizing, when people ask, "Why is my job being analyzed?" you have to be able to respond appropriately. Doing so helps you document the process despite potential resistance, and puts you in a position to propose good solutions for an optimal outcome.

On a more personal note, how did you come to an interest in project management?

This wasn’t my first career. Before I went to college I worked at my family's trucking and automotive business. I ran the day-to-day operations along-side my two brothers. I had a lot of ideas, but I was low man on the totem pole.

One day I started getting into computers, and eventually I wrote a software program to help manage the daily operations. It took me a long time to write the code, as I only had a high school diploma and no formal development experience. But eventually I launched the application and they loved it!

In fact, they still use it to this day. The application covered all the basic aspects of their business, including invoicing, inventory, reporting and other items. In fact, other companies who were in the same business wanted to know what we were using and wanted to buy the application. After selling the application to some companies and supporting it for a while, I decided to go back to school. I pursued a degree in Operations Management, Marketing; with a minor in Information Systems and graduated from the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University.

After graduation, my first job was at Chase Manhattan Bank, now JPMorgan Chase. In that role, I was a part of the “Information Technology Leadership & Management Program." The program consisted of two weeks of training in different areas of bank operations. This was followed by three-month rotations of hands-on experience performing the work you were trained on. We then rotated, had two more weeks of training, and went on to another department and position. I did five rotations and it lasted for about a year and a half.

Through this experience, I found project management to be a cross-mix of operations, marketing and information technology. It really piqued my interest and gave me the experience and skills to put together quick solutions for virtually any project that I came across. Today, having a background and many years of experience in all these different areas helps me be a successful problem solver and manager for just about any type of project.

Well I hope they do not outsource project management overseas like they are outsourcing everything. I don’t think that project management will get outsourced overseas because companies need someone at the heart and pulse of a project. Having the point person overseas with a 12-hour time difference is a big obstacle. It is challenging just to manage a team across the country with only a three-hour time difference! And it is a challenge in itself when you cannot travel and meet everyone. Face-to-face interaction is crucial sometimes and I hope they don’t ever get rid of that. But in the future, overall, I think that local project managers will still be essential.

I think that people with experience in technology, operations and marketing-–a blended skill approach; will still be the kinds of people who will stand out and will be able to manage projects in the future. Whenever I see someone struggling, I see that if they had more of a blended approach in standard operating procedures and process design, Six Sigma, a background in technology--and a knowledge of all the different tools that are out there, that this information and experience could help them achieve their project goals and deadlines.

It is having that arsenal of skills that is crucial. It is what helps me to be successful. I’m not trying to toot my own horn, but these skills are going to remain important to success. I think that companies need to know that cross-functional expertise is a skill set they need to look for when bringing in project management consultants.

Click here to see consultants for Project Management »

« go back to all articles