Page 219 - Global Project Management Handbook

10-8 COMPETENCY FACTORS IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT

list presents suggestions given by those interviewed to avoid the energy killers men-
tioned in the preceding section:
● Accomplish fewer projects simultaneously
● Close down projects that are not assigned a high priority
● Make a clear prioritization among projects
● Provide persistent top-management attention
● Involve top management in status reviews
● Communicate reasons for changes/interference initiated by top management
● Work out and communicate role expectations
● Provide help to the single employee on how to prioritize his/her tasks and projects
● Create a sense of urgency by defining many milestones
● Demand frequent results/subdeliveries from the project team
● Make frequent status reports concerning accomplishments
● Celebrate accomplishments
Besides the list of energy creators designed to prevent the emergence of energy
killers, the employees interviewed in the empirical study pointed to other ways to create
energy in the project-oriented company. These issues were not mentioned as frequently
as the ones in the preceding list, but the data cannot reveal which ones were conceived as
the most important in terms of improving the level of human energy:
● Staff the project with fiery souls
● Initiate/engage in dialogues with individual project team members
● Create individual and personal objectives as supplements to project objectives
● Acknowledge high performance and learning and give feedback on this
● Make the project visible in the organization
● Speak about the project and emphasize its importance
● Conduct short and efficient meetings instead of long ones

Since these energy creators are more or less self-explanatory, elaborations will not be
offered. Instead, the energy killers and energy creators are related to existing theory in the
next section.

EMPIRICAL FINDINGS RELATED TO EXISTING THEORY

The preceding section offered a close look at the empirical data. The purpose of this
section is to take one step back and discuss the empirical data in further depth by intro-
ducing three themes of specific interest: conception of time, conception of pressure, and
conception of importance. The thorough study and huge amount of data generated in
“The Project Effective Company” offer opportunities for analyzing the data from many
different perspectives. However, the themes mentioned earlier seem especially valuable
when it comes to understanding the impact on human energy in relation to how manage-
ment of projects and portfolios takes place. The three themes should not be seen as
complementary; instead, they supplement each other.