When Failure Isn't an Option: New Leadership Professionals Guide Missions to Success
By Brian Turner, Chief Service Delivery Officer, Point B Solutions Group
In this article Brian Turner discusses the job of a project leader — a job that is similar to that of a project manager. Turner compares and contrasts the job duties and requirements of project leaders and project managers in this article. According to Turner, the job of a project leader requires four key components: vision, clarity, motivation, and execution.
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Brian Turner is chief service delivery officer for Point B Solutions Group, LLP, a professional services firm specializing in project leadership.
An oxygen tank exploded, leaving three astronauts without power or air. The radio crackled as it transmitted one of their voices from 320,000 kilometers in space.
âOkay. Houston, weâve had a problem here.â
As their lives hung in the balance, the team at NASAâs Mission Control caught its collective breath and turned to Gene Kranz, flight director for the Apollo 13 mission.
Gene Kranz was a project leader, and it was his job to bring Apollo 13 safely back to earth.
Project leaders like Kranz are an elite set of professionals who are called upon when the risks are high, when failure is not an option, and when the project requires only the very best. Project leaders are part of an emerging profession that is related to â but distinct from â project management.
Like any profession, project leadership requires specialized skills and training and superior judgment. Project leadership combines the science of project management and the art of leadership by bringing four core strengths to each project: vision, clarity, motivation, and execution. These strengths enable project leaders to successfully run mission-critical projects and get the most out of well-managed groups.
In fact, management skills are every bit as important for project leaders as they are for project managers. Project leaders know that management brings order and predictability to complex projects, and they establish the necessary systems, standards, and quality-control measures to ensure success. What project leaders add is a far-sighted ability to adapt and guide others through an ever-changing landscape.
Boiled down to its essence, here's how project managers and leaders differ:
Project Manager
Tracks project tasks and deliverables for completeness and conformity
Schedules meetings and distributes task lists and other documents
Develops work plans and deliverables
Analyzes project issues
Secures resources
Manages overall project quality
Project Leader
Owns the project vision and mission
Validates that the team is solving the right business problem
Communicates the vision clearly throughout the organization to foster responsibility and stewardship within the team
Navigates the political terrain to build momentum
Anticipates and removes project obstacles before they occur
Adapts project execution to the changing business environment
Manages the right project vital signs, leading to satisfied stakeholders and improved business results
Gene Kranz was directing the Apollo 13 mission because heâd demonstrated the âright stuffâ as a project leader. He had been in Mission Control throughout the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions and had achieved phenomenal outcomes in high-risk situations. Through these experiences he developed the wisdom to make the right decisions at the right times, and he knew how to create a high-performance team. In short, he had the qualities of a project leader.
When a government contractor said the incident would be NASAâs worst disaster, Kranz immediately corrected him. âNo,â he said. âThis will be NASAâs finest hour.â That was Kranzâs vision, which he repeatedly communicated to his team.
He also spoke with absolute clarity about how the vision would be realized. His team would retrieve the crew of Apollo 13 with no loss of life. Failure was ânot an option,â he said, and nothing less than the survival of the entire crew would be accepted.
As a former fighter pilot himself, Kranz knew how to motivate his team of fighter pilots and aerospace pioneers. The competitive spirit that had propelled them to the tops of their fields also motivated them here. Despite the remote odds of success, Kranz set the highest possible standards and convinced them that their world-class team could bring Apollo 13 back. His ânothing short of excellenceâ approach carried through to the very end. The Mission Control group returned the astronauts to earth, and the splashdown next to the recovery ship was one of the closest ever recorded.
The foundation for this success was the planning, training for, and execution of all project tasks. In this area Kranz drew on his project management skills and added his extra ability as a leader to select, assign, and develop his team members so they could execute flawlessly across shifts.
âThese four teams in Mission Control worked together like an Olympic relay team, handing over the baton of the shift, hour after hour, day after day,â he recalled in an interview in 2000. âIt all summed up to the right people at the right place at the right time, and with the right chemistry, that said, âWeâre never gonna [sic] leave a crew stranded in space. This bunch is coming home. And weâre the right people to make it happen.ââ
Vision. Clarity. Motivation. Execution. Elite professionals like Kranz deliver them when it matters and show why project leadership leads to mission success.
About the Author
Brian Turner is chief service delivery officer for Point B Solutions Group, LLP, a professional services firm specializing in project leadership. Founded in Seattle in 1995, the firm provides a diverse and experienced team of locally based project leaders to companies in Seattle, Denver, Portland, Phoenix, San Francisco, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Point B has also been named one of the top three employers in the industry by Consulting Magazine and a top small workplace by the Wall Street Journal and Winning Workplaces. Additional information on the firm and its offerings can be viewed online at www.pointb.com.
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