mike harlow

Large technology projects have some of the highest failure rates in the project world. A McKinsey study revealed that 17% of projects over 15 million dollars go so badly as to threaten their organization’s existence.  ComputerWorld examined 3,555 IT projects between 2003 and 2012 that had a labor cost of $10 million. 41.4% had to be restarted from scratch and only 6.4% of them were deemed successful (achieving their intended goals).

Stated reasons for IT project failures indicate a clear lack of leadership; vague goals, inadequate solution understanding, misplaced optimism, weak execution focus, reactivity, indecision, missing skill-sets, poor accountability, misaligned incentives, weak oversight... the list goes on and on.

Unfortunately ‘leadership’, like ‘innovation’ (that I discuss here), has become a business buzzword and the ongoing topic of countless biographies, business books, and articles with touted 'secrets' to leadership success. It's hard to find the signal in all of the noise.

I’ll admit it, I enjoy the occasional leadership article and book myself.  Aware that these resources are based on unique emotional hooks to catch our limited attention, I devised a simple BS detector to validate their claims. 

This is my personal test; I see if I can identify successful leaders with the touted trait, behavior or style and it’s opposite.  If it’s a true secret for leadership success, then it’s opposite should be a well-travelled road to failure.

Let’s try the opposites test with today’s popular ‘servant leadership’ model (that is hard not to like).   Is the more ‘effective’ leader ‘inclusive, transparent, enabling, humble and servant-like’ or its opposite ‘hierarchical, secretive, ruthless, self-promoting and dominant’? 

The responses I've gotten to this question are interesting:

• “How are you measuring leadership effectiveness? Quarterly profitability? Employee Satisfaction?”
• “What country, organization and industry are we talking about here? Japan? USA? A publicly traded company?  A non-profit? A software startup? Wall street?”  

In our competitive individualistic culture, the winner between servant vs. self-serving leadership styles is a dissatisfying ‘it depends’.   Setting aside any distaste for self-serving leadership styles, there are examples of their success everywhere. 

This isn’t that surprising.  History is ripe with leaders with diverse styles, traits and motivations forging very different paths to success.  The effectiveness and survivability of a leader often depends on timing, environment, style, and area of skill and passion. 

Look at Winston Churchill.  He was regarded by those around him as the wrong leader for Britain (peace time), until he was obviously the right leader for Britain (war time). Why? 

Now look at two very different leaders. Would Gandhi have led Facebook to global dominance?  Would Mark Zuckerberg have led India to independence? Why not? 

The truth is that the traits, motivations and styles of successful leaders can vary wildly. To deal with this reality, let's try moving from “The top 10 traits of all great leaders” to, “Is there something that all strong leaders do regardless of environment, interest or style?”

First and foremost all strong leaders 'lead'. They take us from (A) where we are today, to (B) somewhere better that they strongly believe in and actively guide us to.  To do this;

A strong leader has clear goals they want to realize and spends the majority of their time trying to rally and align people to their goals. They are consumed by what they are trying to achieve and confident in their personal ability to realize it.  They continually press forward because the realization of their goal outweighs naysayers, obstacles and failures.  They are always identifying barriers to progress and are quick to deal with them.  Far from dreamers with lofty ideas, they make informed reality-based plans and execute them.  They understand the domain they lead and have the skills and experience to adapt to new realities and make informed decisions to drive progress.  They walk the talk and lead by example because their style embodies their beliefs and the future they promote is their destination too. 

The above leadership definition passes my ‘opposites’ test and appears to describe many of the Fortune list of 2014 Worlds 50 greatest leaders (even with their varying styles). This is a good start.

With this working definition of leadership in hand, let's move to leadership in technology projects. Technology represents a rapidly changing landscape of wildly diverse options.  It is a very hard field to master and stay on top of. This is a domain that is not easily navigated without clear solution goals and strong experienced leadership. 

Can we leverage this leadership definition on our technology projects to identify gaps in leadership?

I believe we can and would like to offer a simple leadership test. Look at your technology project and ask, “Do we have the solution leadership that…”

• ...believes in their clear solution vision and has the passion to rally and align resources?
• ...has the skill and experience to set the right direction and lead complex execution?
• ...has a bias towards action and a deep impatience for solution progress and results?
• ...is motivated and persists towards goals in the face of resistance, obstacles and failures?
• ...is highly engaged and continually evaluating the project to identify risks, adapt to new realities and make decisions?
• ...sets and maintains a strong culture by walking their talk, correcting opposing behavior and leading by example?

I find this test not only helps identify leadership gaps, but can identify potential leaders.

I'll leave you with a Yogi Berra quote that sums up the importance of strong leadership, “If you don't know where you're going, you might end up somewhere else”.

Wise words Yogi... wise words.

If you would like to discuss leadership, share project experiences or talk about how a clear solution vision can be created and executed, feel free to contact me.

© Copyright 2015 - Mike Harlow   updated 2016

• “Strategy without execution is hallucination.” Thomas Edison
• “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” Peter F. Drucker
• “Excellence is the accumulation of hundreds of minute decisions; it is execution at the most granular level. Once you accept the idea that you should give in to things that make no sense because other people do those things and you want to appear reasonable, you are on a path towards mediocrity.” Eva Moskowitz
• “Of all the things I’ve done, the most vital is coordinating those who work with me and aiming their efforts at a certain goal.” Walt Disney,
• “You don’t have to hold a position in order to be a leader.” Henry Ford