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Working from home again? Key learnings for managers and leaders
Our data shows that managing projects from concept to review is a critical weakness across all sectors of New Zealand’s business leadership, as evidenced by the chart below:
Our Energy Sector Insights Paper reveals that, despite COVID-19 affecting countless lives and increasing volatility, New Zealand energy sector organisations have a wealth of support from their employees who firmly believe in their businesses’ purpose, are motivated by their leaders’ ability to communicate a shared vision and are meaningfully connected to their roles.
The greatest risk, however, is that this ‘goodwill buffer’ is being eroded by a lack of consultation between leadership and employees, frustrations with technology that is not match fit, and poor project management.
Project management is one of the six key findings examined in the paper. Below we look at how organisations and leaders in this sector can tackle challenges relating to this area that could well be applicable across all New Zealand sectors.
Project Management: a scarcity of skill?
The recognition by both the executive and employees that there is a lack of project management structure and discipline might reflect skill scarcity in the area. If organisations are going to have the capability to respond with agility and take advantage of opportunities as they emerge, they must support their people to upskill in collaboration and project management.
Early planning and organising of a project or initiative is key to motivating and creating a culture of involvement with the team to ensure a project’s success. Both executives and employees report their project implementation techniques are adequate, but changes to plans and deadlines are not communicated well.
Leaders are also missing opportunities to review the success of a project. Employees report that there is a lack of review process when it comes to seeing how well the actual outcomes of a project reflected the forecasted outcome.
There is a lack of information and analysis so no actions are taken to try and improve next time round. Organisations are also in a danger of easily falling into a cycle of underperformance when failing to learn from previous and ongoing work.
