PM ADVISORY:

Six Leadership Actions that Made this Project Successful

By Dennis Peters
Siemens Energy

USA

My team had just successfully delivered a project phase with a myriad of challenges (global in scope, multiple customers and users, political challenges, tight budget and schedule, etc.) A colleague of mine that had observed the project from start to finish asked me to document what I did as a leader to help ensure success while it was fresh on my mind. Here are the six items I shared with him.

1. Strived for balance

All aspects of a project are important, but we didn’t lose our entire focus to any one area. Training, organizational change, software configuration/technology, process definition, financial management, vendor management, team morale, etc. If I saw one of these area’s slipping, that’s where I put the focus. I’ve seen other projects that spend too much of their focus in one area, and don’t tackle the area’s where the real problems exist. Either they’re scared to tackle something they don’t fully understand, or are afraid that someone else will tell them they’re wrong, or just don’t like doing it, or something! But a project can’t handle this attitude.

I didn’t care if someone needed my help to badge in the front door with security, or if a Steering Committee member needed to hear the truth about the impact of one of their decisions… I made sure the gaps got filled… and to clarify, I never jumped in to take over what one of my team members was already doing well, even if it was personally fun to me. If they know their job, I got out of the way and made sure the road-blocks were out of their way!

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About the Author Dennis Peters Author Dennis Peters, PMP works as a Strategic Project Manager for Siemens Energy, a global engineering and manufacturing company that produces clean energy products to address today’s most advanced energy demands. Mr. Peters has run numerous multi-million dollar IT projects for Siemens and managed the IT portfolio for some of its larger divisions. Currently he is managing a Product Lifecycle Management improvement project that includes a global implementation of Teamcenter affecting up to 3,000 engineers world-wide across 3 major product lines. Mr. Peters is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and has a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Management from the University of Phoenix. Dennis can be reached at dennis.peters@siemens.com .