Corporate culture, the way individuals relate to each other within an organisation and they way they feel about the organisation, has a profound impact on the approach that needs to be taken in tackling projects. For example, in organisations where employees are frequently long-serving e.g. banks, utilities, an individual's career will outlast many roles, but will build strong relationships with some colleagues over several "engagements".  Where that colleague is more senior, we often see a patronage system developing, where "who you know" is far more important than "what you know".  The challenge here is to clarify the personal loyalties within the project team and understand what impact these have on the successful execution of project roles, and

Case Study 2

A multi-national oil company had updated its IT strategy, aiming for "IT agility" to deliver business agility.  One of our team was asked to help in the feasibility study looking into using new technology.  The culture was one of openness and commitment to the company and the project role.  As a result the approach to stakeholder and team management was substantially simpler and more direct.  This was particularly important in:

• identifying suitable options for a proof-of-concept project
• identifying the response to this likely from key stakeholders
• working closely with the wide range of staff in the organisation involved in the project

Outcome

The proof-of-concept was so well received by the business stakeholders that they wanted it to go into production at the earliest opportunity.  The whole project took less than 8 weeks.

Corporate Culture

introduce management disciplines very carefully.

A very different scenario is in organisations that are used to taking risks as a core part of their business e.g. energy.  This tends to breed a culture in which new ideas are welcomed and the focus can be much more on benefits and process.

We ascertain the nature of the culture in the client organisation and tune our approach accordingly. Dynamic Technologies has a research project under way to produce a handbook for those planning and managing business change that help identify aspects of corporate culture and the challenges commonly associated with them.  

Case Study 1

 A high-street bank appointed a manager with limited project experience to run a major time-critical compliance project, with a brand new team of long-serving staff from diverse backgrounds.  He recognized the need to introduce project disciplines, and needed help in doing so.

The corporate culture here was one of very long service, despite rounds of redundancy, so the strength of the team was seriously reduced by weak commitment to "THE TEAM".  This required 

• a very strong sales pitch for the benefits of project management disciplines when individuals preferred to work in isolation
• ensuring the team members took ownership of their inputs
• assertiveness and coaching to get timely input from the team to the management of the project 
• strong reinforcement of the value their input delivered

Outcome

This project was delivered with complete success on time, with active risk and issue management showing few residual risks over the last few weeks.  The introduction of detailed quantitative reporting was so successful on the first project that we were retained to ensure it was available for a second, much larger, project.