PMO Pro-Tips: Managing C-Suite Stakeholder Perceptions

Success is in the eyes of the beholder. For projects, that means winning over the top decision makers in the C-suite. How can project management office leaders best share project progress with executives? How can you better engage the C-suite to manage their POVs? We discuss this with Douglas Pulini, PMP, PMI-PMOCP, head of the strategic management office at SPC Brasil in São Paulo, and Stephan Wohlfahrt, PMI-ACP, DAVSC, PMP, head of the project management office at Bosch Mobility in Stuttgart, Germany. 

Key themes

00:56 The C-suite’s role in project success

02:33 How PMO leaders decide what information to share with executives

05:24 Ways to engage executives to benefit project success

10:26 Choosing how to best present project updates to the C-suite

14:28 Must-have skills for PMO leaders to effectively manage stakeholder perceptions

Transcript

Transcript

STEPHAN WOHLFAHRT

Good cooperation between executives, between sponsors and project managers is really the key to successful projects.

STEVE HENDERSHOT 

In project management offices, effective leadership requires guiding teams as well as managing up: ensuring that executives, sponsors and other upstream stakeholders are aligned on why projects matter and what success looks like. Today, we discuss how to make that happen. 

In today’s fast-paced and complex business landscape, project professionals lead the way, delivering value while tackling critical challenges and embracing innovative ways of working. On Projectified®, we bring you insights from the project management community to help you thrive in this evolving world of work through real-world stories and strategies, inspiring you to advance your career and make a positive impact.

This is Projectified. I’m Steve Hendershot.

There’s more to a successful project than hitting your deadlines and budgets. You also need to win over the executive stakeholders whose perspectives play a crucial role in determining your project’s fate. 

Accordingly, project management office, or PMO, leaders need to show executives why projects are worth the effort and expense—aligning everyone to the same expectations and definitions of success. 

Today, we’ll get some insight on how to do that from two PMO leaders: Douglas Pulini, head of the strategic management office at SPC Brasil in São Paulo, and Stephan Wohlfahrt, head of the project management office of Bosch Mobility in Stuttgart, Germany. 

MUSICAL TRANSITION

STEVE HENDERSHOT

Let’s kick this thing off. We’re talking about stakeholder perceptions— especially from the C-suite—of projects, and how PMO leaders can affect those. Why do they matter? How can that even affect a project? Douglas?

DOUGLAS PULINI

Basically, the PMO must be the facilitator [and] support the successful delivery of the project. And most part of this is to provide information for the management level [to] understand the point of the implementation. The C-level, for example, the executives, the dynamic is a little bit different. Executives need to see the PMO like the support in decision making. It’s important the PMO leader and the PMO serve the C-level with the right information for decision making. And, of course, you have a dashboard, reports. This is really important, but the right information for decision making is the best for the C-level. 

STEVE HENDERSHOT

How do you think about what information to share? What are you thinking about in terms of, “This is what I’m trying to communicate or accomplish via these communications?” And then, how might that influence what you are communicating, either via dashboard or via email, conversation, [or] other sorts of communications?

STEPHAN WOHLFAHRT 

I would say the most important thing is to understand and to know both perspectives. So sometimes executives and project managers speak kind of different languages, and perceptions are different. As a project manager, I’m tracking my budget. And as an executive, I have an eye on the outcome of the project. So that means I as a PMO have to serve as a kind of interpreter, a translator or a moderator between both sides to make both understand each other. And that’s the most important thing. 

DOUGLAS PULINI

When I work today here in the PMO, basically the most important information that we have here is estimation to completion. Basically, all the costs I need to complete that project. When you talk with the C-level, they want to see how much I need to spend to deliver the project and compare this value [to] the value that comes from the output of the project. In the second point for the C-level, they really want to know when this project is going to increase the revenue of the company. 

STEVE HENDERSHOT

So as a PMO leader, you’re taking on this translation role between your project managers and teams and executive stakeholders. Stephan, what does that look like in your context? How do you manage it?

STEPHAN WOHLFAHRT

Normally, the projects are started by the executives, so either through strategy or through direct projects. That’s exactly the point where we normally come into play. So are the project goals really measurable? Sometimes we start initiatives that sound good, but at the end, if you ask if the targets, if the goals are really clear and measurable, then they’re maybe not in the first step. So we need to see what’s really the target.

If we talk about a typical project, like efficiency increase, someone from the C-suite says, “We need to increase engineering efficiency” or whatever. Then of course you can start such a project. But how do you know when you reach the target? So what exactly is the goal? How much should we increase efficiency? And this is the point where we come in and say, “Okay, let’s clearly define targets so that the project manager clearly knows which target to follow.” We moderate these things and by that improve the understanding and also the probability to reach the goals in the right time. 

STEVE HENDERSHOT

When you’re managing this conversation and bringing the right information, and you’ve got the right metrics in front of the C-suite, what can the PMO do in terms of engaging helpfully an executive in the project?

STEPHAN WOHLFAHRT

What you can do as a PMO is to give them the opportunity to learn about project management. Many sponsors and many executives are, of course, initially from line management. So they’ve always worked with projects, but they see projects as something to fulfill targets—and of course that’s what it is. So sometimes we have different views on things. So the project manager tracks budget. The executive wants to see the outcome, the benefit.  

Good engagement is really brought in by the executive, him or herself, because they should be the triggers for the project. They should, as a sponsor, initiate the project and explain the need for the project—explain the strategic need—and that’s where we have to go into the dialogue. So if the need for a project is unclear, then we, of course, need to talk to the executive to come up with the reasons, to come up with more explanation. And triggering this engagement will also lead to a better project in a later phase. Because if the sponsor, if the executive, is regularly involved and in regular contact with the project manager, this will make everything easier.

DOUGLAS PULINI

To get this buy-in and align perception and align information of the project and the C-level, we have an alignment and perception management strategy. Small meetings to ensure that the C-level knows about the project. Sometimes we make a workshop and put all teams together to explain to the executives the real goal and benefits. Basically, it’s the business plan for that project, for example. And the good part of this [is] we increase the voice of the management of the company. Explain to executives how important it is. Because sometimes the C-level doesn’t understand the minor problems that we are going to solve. But it’s very interesting because all teams together and the C-level get really the buy-in, really understand some problem in the field, some problem in the operations.  

STEPHAN WOHLFAHRT

We have something very similar here. We call it project initiation and acceleration workshops at the beginning. It’s a kind of extended kickoff workshop where the project team gets together and prepares the project management plan. So they talk about the project. They get all the needs for the project. They understand what it is about, but they also work out the major risks. They work out the boundary conditions, etc. And at the end of the workshop, the management joins. The target is to get commitment and to understand the boundary conditions, to understand that there are major risks, if there are, and to get the full backing from the management.

And this works pretty good because they get a good feeling of the complexity. They get a good feeling of the mood of the team, the team spirit, and they can also impact it and influence it by just giving some motivational aspects. So what’s the target? How does the project serve the strategy, etc.? So that’s a good practice to get good buy-in.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

What can happen when you get misalignment, when there’s a breakdown between buy-in or executive perception and the project team. 

DOUGLAS PULINI

We have a break point in the project, independent of the middle of the project. Here we have the weekly basis review of the whole portfolio. And I have two hours every Monday in my board [meeting] to explain all projects that we implemented. We took the decision if that project is going to continue or not on the weekly basis. I bring the managers to explain what’s happening here—the project manager, the teams—and we basically are going to end this project or we are going to realign the goals of project. Because sometimes we don’t achieve all the outcomes that we need, but it’s still an important project that we need to deliver.

STEPHAN WOHLFAHRT

The key point is be transparent. Be open, communicate and provide options. If you only come up with issues, with problems, that will probably not help. So if we need a decision, we should provide the right options and then, of course, enough facts so that the decision also can be taken.

STEVE HENDERSHOT 

What do you find is the best way to present these updates to the C-suite? 

DOUGLAS PULINI

In Brazil specifically, we use WhatsApp for communication, the short communication. I think other countries have SMS messages and other things like that. All Fridays I send all the information individually to the C-level of our company. And I program another report on Sundays for my executives because on Sundays, our executives, most of them, are going to see some emails. And, believe it or not, my executives they thanked me [for sending] this information on the Friday and the Sunday. Because they will prepare for the Monday discussion that we have in the board meeting.

STEVE HENDERSHOT 

Stephan, you have anything to add there?

STEPHAN WOHLFAHRT

Ask them what they need. So that means: be flexible in terms of reporting. So if you have always predefined dashboards only that are not in line with what executives want to see, then of course that’s a problem. You should really ask at the beginning, especially in case of new projects or in case of new project types. What’s the expectation? What do you need for steering? We can make proposals here, but at the end, it’s always a matter of discussion how they want to steer.

And then of course, also check how much time the executive can invest, wants to invest or should invest into the project, and then follow these things and discuss them. So if as a PMO I have the impression that closer tracking would be helpful, then it’s my task to discuss that and to find an agreement here. How we can get the best reporting here so to allow also the best decisions.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

Stefan, is there an example you can point to when either you needed to manage perception that was drifting or just needed to sort of reach up and stir up some engagement? 

STEPHAN WOHLFAHRT

What happens quite often is underestimated complexity. Think about typical change projects. Let’s take process development, for example, or a new process that has to be introduced. That sounds very easy, but especially in large companies, you have a lot of boundary conditions. You need to figure out who are the stakeholders? Who are the projects that are affected? How do you deal with projects that are already running? Do they have to adapt to the new process or not? How are these things going? 

This is often underestimated by executives who just need to fulfill something. But in this case, we have to manage complexity and also to talk about this complexity, to make it clear why certain things take maybe longer than they were estimated at the beginning. And here often, good visualization helps. So draw a map of complexity. I like these visualizations because they make things really clear. They make things really transparent. And [then] you have a good basis for discussion.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

What about managing the C-suite’s perceptions of the PMO long-term? How do you communicate the value that the projects are delivering over an extended period of time?  

DOUGLAS PULINI

We have the BSC—balance scorecard. This is basically our way to see all the strategy of the company. The outcome of these projects, we put the KPIs in the BSC. However, here in the PMO, you have a huge dashboard of the last 100 projects that we delivered. And [we] bring this information and put it in our reports because we need to show the company, show the C-level, all projects that we did in the last years, past five years, that value that we assume in the start of the project is really in the outcome. When we don’t have this outcome, the company knows that, and we have the plan actions in the BSC to revert this. 

STEVE HENDERSHOT

What do you think are the key skills or capabilities that PMO leaders listening should hone or develop to get better at aligning stakeholder expectations and, ultimately, delivering more successfully. 

DOUGLAS PULINI

Stay close to your executives and stakeholders. You need to be present, supportive, even at the psychological and emotional level. Always act in the best interest for the organization as a whole in the balance between the individual needs and the collective values for the company. We need to communicate clearly and effectively—send emails, meetings—but it’s important to understand how the communication is better understood for your stakeholders.

STEPHAN WOHLFAHRT

Be empathetic. Understand your stakeholders. Understand their needs. Understand their roles. What is their viewpoint, and how does this fit into the project manager’s point of view? Provide the right tools, provide the right cockpit charts, the right reporting so that both sides can really work with them.

And of course, also provide training and coaching. That’s an important thing. Install trainings not only for project managers, but also make some offerings for executives, for sponsors. So how can they get better [at] their job? How can they improve their abilities, in terms of project sponsorship, in terms of being an executive and serving the project?

DOUGLAS PULINI

If I can add, we have the sponsorship program. Basically, it’s a training for the C-level [on] how to support a project, how to sponsor a project in the beginning to the end. Sponsorship is a main part of the project delivery. Sometimes the project is going wrong. It’s going badly. Something is not predicted. We’re going to face it, but the C-level needs to understand that. And here, we have training, a learning process for each C-level that we have here, because business sponsorship is different for the CEO, for the COO, for the CTO. 

STEPHAN WOHLFAHRT

At the end, it’s about manage and support and steer the project, but avoid micromanagement. We should never see the sponsor as the better project manager because they both have their roles. They both have their tasks, and they should not overlap. They really fit together, and they can produce the best outcome.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

Last thing for me. What’s the top piece of advice for other PMO leaders?  

STEPHAN WOHLFAHRT

Most important thing is networking. Know your stakeholders, talk to them, be empathetic. Try to improve both sides’—so both sponsors and executives and project managers—understanding of cooperation. And by that, [you’ll] improve the whole project portfolio.

DOUGLAS PULINI

The PMO leader must be the link, the facilitator. To empathize. Good communication. The technical skills are important, but the soft skills, how to communicate, understand our stakeholders. And most important than that is understand the value of each project that we deliver. 

STEVE HENDERSHOT

That’s great. Thanks very much to both of you. 

DOUGLAS PULINI

Thank you so much for this invitation. 

STEPHAN WOHLFAHRT

Thanks a lot from my side. 

STEVE HENDERSHOT

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