Tailor-made training targets the people issues at Heywood Williams
Tailor-made training targets the people issues at Heywood Williams
What use are Gantt charts and audit trails when people will not communicate,when they have not understood team roles or when they do not know how to negotiate? Project management may be recognized as a mission-critical skill, but without a clear understanding of how people work together, the best project techniques and processes in the world will fail to get businesses the improvements they want.
Many project-management courses do acknowledge the need for people skills,but such courses tend to refer to people skills as "soft", for which the sub-text is "unimportant". This is compounded by the over-emphasis most training companies give to those so-called "hard" project-management skills – project lifecycles, planning tools, risk-management analyses and forecasting methods. You will probably get something on project leadership and team working at the end of most project-management courses, but the emphasis is typically skewed. The truth is that way that people work together in project teams is the key success factor. It involves an array of skills including communication, negotiation, motivation and conflict management, and this aspect of project management needs to take as much precedence as any specialist project tool or technique.
One company to have recognized that the focus in project-management training has to start with its people is Heywood Williams, a key player in the £3 billion UK PVC windows, doors and conservatories market.
"When I arrived at the company I realized that so much of the way we intended to grow as a business, and the ways in which we wished to improve in terms of performance, was dependent on the way we managed and facilitated projects", saidHoward Whiteley, group programme manager. "I see project working as the springboard for the way that we want to develop. We have projects taking place at all levels throughout the various divisions as well as between our sister companies, but until recently we have been rather inward looking. There was therefore a clear case for project-management training.
"The building blocks of project management begin with people improving their understanding of one another. Yet there are very few companies in the market offering training that focuses specifically on this aspect of project management. Pera does and so we designed a course with them that used our documentation, instilled some of the essentials in project-management thinking and highlighted the way project teams should run and operate."
Pera, which runs courses in business improvement, manufacturing skills and management development, has its own dedicated training venue, Middle Aston House, with both indoor and outdoor training facilities and more than 40 outdoor"set" learning activities that trainers can use. Such activities involve people working in team projects that take place on lakes, in the woods or at specially designed activity areas. It provides a good environment for companies that want to get to grips with leadership and team issues.
Graham Haynes, the Pera consultant who facilitated the HeywoodWilliams programme, said: "Themost powerful training is relevant, engaging and creative. Our course on building project teams is exactly that. Of course, every team is different, so we designed experiential exercises for Heywood Williams that were intended to draw out the issues it faced in the business. The outdoor projects mirror what goes on in teams and we were able to highlight various core issues such as the need for better communication and collaboration, the importance of team leadership and the need to be able to manage conflict".
The project activities were varied. Seaworthy rafts were constructed and sailed, teams were asked to negotiate notionally "live" minefields using plank and barrel equipment and valuable resources had to be carefully transported using ropes and pulley systems.
"The projects are enjoyable and involve everyone, but the key learning usually comes out of the review process", said Graham Haynes. "We had some very experienced managers on these courses and by the end of the training they had understood what they had to do to lead and weld a team together, as well as how to advance the projects in which they were involved".
Howard Whiteley continued: "Ours is a practical company that makes things and the experiential nature of the training went down well with all the people who participated. They could see the relevance of the activities to the projects in which they are involved and they were very receptive to the learning. However, as well as enjoying the exercises, they needed the theoretical classroom input. They needed to understand about project definition and to think about the stakeholder mapping and the timescales involved in every project. It was a good balance between classroom, group and syndicate work and the whole company has now associated Middle Aston House with management development.
"This is a start-up process for us, but the training has hit its goals",he confirmed. "We are seeing people rising to the challenge, understanding what is required in their projects and taking responsibility for project-leading roles. Not surprisingly, this means that project teams are now operating more effectively. We are also seeing clearer action plans with very specific goals being defined and, in most cases, people working better together.
"However, this is only the start of our journey. The challenge now is to build on the foundation that this training has given us".
