Is workplace culture overlooked as a key success factor in project delivery?
Many factors influence whether a project will be delivered successfully - robust planning, sufficient controls, a risk-based approach, effective management and communication - just to name a few. However, and somewhat ironically, where project teams are diligent in their approach to recognise and respond to risks that would set a project back, all too often we overlook how an organisation’s culture can serve as a block or catalyst for success.
In a nutshell, a strong workplace culture steers an organisation’s decision patterns, guides actions and drives the behaviours of the team. All organisations exhibit a culture in some form, and equally, so do project teams. In this sense, culture serves as an invisible glue in every project and should be better considered an essential factor for delivering successful projects.
In this blog, our Founder and Managing Director, Simon Kirkbride, shares his thoughts on how culture impacts project delivery and how we can better leverage workplace culture as a tool to influence success.
WHY IS CULTURE OVERLOOKED?
No project sets out to have a negative culture, however, some of the root causes can often be traced right back to the early stages of the project lifecycle. During this period, the primary focus is on areas such as the business case, requirements, scope, funding, strategy, schedule, cost and risk (all of which are valid considerations). However, more often than not, there is not enough consideration as to what the project culture should look like.
This approach means that culture is often overlooked right from the outset - left to develop without intention or guiding principles.
On top of this, projects are transient in their very nature. They come and go with a fixed timeline and end date, whereas organisations are permanent. This can mean leaders question the return on investment if they push resources and time into creating the right culture for what is seen as a temporary endeavour.
As well as being temporary in their timeline, project teams are temporary too. They knit together people from a multitude of organisations and frameworks, all of which have their own cultures and value systems. As a result, there can often be poor alignment between parties when it comes to agreeing and embedding a project's culture and values.
If you work in the project world, you will be familiar with challenging delivery expectations that can lead to pressure and stress, which resonate throughout the project team and supply chain. Bonuses and incentive fees may be placed on short-term milestones and in some cases, completely the wrong priorities. This can lead to focus being placed on the delivery of certain milestones at all costs, regardless of the impact it is having on the team.
Team disillusionment and frustration may also be heightened by a lack of structured rotation of the team and development pathways, which leaves people feeling like they are purely there to deliver the project and their development has been pushed to the sidelines.
Perhaps the most influential factor is that the criteria for leadership positions in the project world often focus on factors such as technical ability, tenacity, resilience and delivery focus. These attributes (which are great in themselves) can often be put before other attributes such as people skills, leadership, empathy and the ability to galvanise a team and set a clear vision.
WHAT ARE THE SIGNS OF POOR CULTURE IN PROJECT DELIVERY?
There are a number of ways a negative culture can manifest itself during project delivery. A high turnover of personnel is a strong indication of disillusionment as well as a breakdown in communications between teams and stakeholders.
Interface management is a key area of project delivery and this can become harder to manage as teams gravitate to working in silos with the greater interest of the project being overlooked.
Equally, a lack of innovation and loss of productivity is also a natural output as the team does not feel they have the autonomy or freedom to make meaningful change.
In some cases (often when a project is struggling), the culture can become toxic, where there is a complete breakdown in open and honest communication and people become afraid to speak the truth. People who would usually feel passionately about a problem are quickly shut down for speaking up. Where this becomes the norm, this will start to have detrimental impacts on people’s health presenting itself in higher rates of anxiety, depression and absence.
As a result of all of this, ultimately cost, schedule, quality and safety will all be impacted in some way by poor workplace culture.
SOLVING THE CULTURE PROBLEM IN PROJECT DELIVERY
While a huge focus has been given to safety culture over the past decades, some may argue that equal time and focus have not been given to the general workplace culture in project delivery environments. So, how can we start prioritising culture to help deliver successful projects?
A key step is allowing for sufficient training of the project leadership team as well as allocating time and headspace to think about a culture strategy. This strategy needs to integrate with the supply chain and not just be considered at the client level.
Think about how you will measure the culture, often organisations may have some insights but these are usually not distilled down to the project level. Start with the basics, what is the turnover of staff for the project (including the supply chain), and what are the root causes for staff turnover? Conduct team pulse checks. Make culture a focal point of discussion at regular meetings.
Consider setting KPIs relating to culture. KPIs exist in the project delivery world for everything else but are normally lacking when it comes to culture. This is counter-productive given that a poor culture will lead to a high turnover of personnel, a loss of productivity and will impact mental and physical health.
For a healthy culture to flourish, leaders need to foster an environment that encourages open and transparent conversations where people do not feel scared to discuss bad news and challenges on the project. This communication is vital between the project team and the supply chain so that a culture and value system can be agreed upon for every level of the project. New starters should be immersed in this culture too.
To encourage development, consider rotating team members around a project or programme to give people the opportunity to develop and upskill throughout the lifecycle of a project. This will lead to greater job satisfaction and prevent frustration, minimising staff turnover.
Most importantly, leaders need to create a project culture where it is OK to fail. This is how we learn and it is how we will improve and innovate. When we are scared to fail, we stop speaking up in meetings and voicing our opinions and that’s not good.
And finally, leaders have to ‘walk the walk’ when it comes to creating and embedding the right culture. They must live and breathe the project values and demonstrate this daily through their actions. Only through this, will the culture resonate throughout the entire project organisation.
CONCLUSION
Of course, building a healthy project culture isn’t an overnight win - it will take time and vital investment from the people at the top. However, better communication, boosted morale and higher staff retention make it all worth it.
At Blueprint, we have worked hard to create a culture that allows our team to bring their authentic selves to work, which in turn helps us to deliver success for our client’s projects. Our founding principles of the ‘Blueprint Way’ act as an anchor to remind us of the importance of our culture and values. All of this has meant our people feel enabled to question, challenge and effectively do their job, to ensure the best outcome on a project.
To understand how we can support your project team, and work towards creating a culture that delivers success, get in touch. We’d love to chat.