Learning vs. Delivering: Why a Long-Term View Makes All the Difference in Project Teams

Steve Jobs was asked “what’s the most important thing that you learnt at Apple”. He paused. For 18 seconds. He thought deeply about what it was and the way to express it. Here’s what he said

“Good question. Erm. I’m not sure I learned this when I was at Apple but I learned it based on the data when I was at Apple. And that is I now take a longer term view on people. In other words, when I see something not being done right, my first reaction isn’t to go fix it, it’s to say we’re building a team here and we’re going to do great stuff for the next decade not just the next year. And so what do I need to do to help so that the person that’s screwing up learns.”

What’s your thinking horizon when it comes to people on your project?

In all walks of life, to get the best out of people, the very best always take a long term view

World class sports coaches epitomise this. When you see a world class sports coach take on a new team, for the next few games, they may lose, or they may win ugly, but the language of the coach is not about the game. The language of the coach is often about how elements of their philosophy are starting to show on the pitch, or how they can see the things that have been discussed in training starting to materialise. They’re not looking at the result of the game. They’re thinking longer term about where the team goes and getting the best out of the team.

This doesn’t just show up in sport. In leadership, Captain David Marquet took the long term view in taking the worst performing submarine in the fleet and making it the best performing in the fleet; or why terrorist organisations are so hard for the West to disband - when long term view meets short term view. Boy, did I just go to terrorist organisations in a LinkedIn post about project management - I’m just asking for comments now aren’t I! But it’s true - long term thinking has been shown in many walks of life, to get different results from people than short term thinking.

What’s your thinking horizon on your project?

One of my research interests is project success. How do we define it and how do we deliver it. At it’s simplest (and this is way too simple but good enough for illustration purposes here), success could be delivering the benefit, in the expected timeframe, for the expected cost. But if the walls of the building are littered with casualties caused along the way, is that success? If the project delivered slightly less than expected, took slightly longer, cost a little bit more, but everyone on the project grew as a person and learned valuable lessons that they will take on to their next role in the company, is that not more successful?

If we accept that the best and brightest thinkers in our recent past observe that long term thinking on people delivers better results, how can that translate to our projects?

I want to also acknowledge that this is hard. Principally because a project is in fact a temporary endeavour. It’s in the actual definition of the word according to the Project Management Institute. It’s hard to have a long term view on a short term endeavour. But it’s not impossible and the advantages to doing so are immense.

What a long term view on people looks like on your project

• Lots of questions being asked of people, instead of people being told

• People understand the “what” and the “why”, but are left to figure out the “how”

• A lot of active challenge and acceptance of a good challenge as a good thing

• Project Manager as a supporting role, not a directing role

• People development plans are available as a project artefact

Some of you will think this is fanciful and the actual job of a Project Manager is to get the best short term result. My experience directly challenges that. When I have spoken to Sponsors, often the most senior sponsors, who are concerned about the project slippage, or the forecast cost increase, they often come to me and ask why. When I explain that the reason we’ve slipped is that Bob (let’s call him Bob), has been going down the wrong road with his idea on how to implement a certain feature, and I knew Bob was going down the wrong road, but I chose to let him and accept the impact on the project because it was a big learning opportunity for Bob, I have never, not even once, had a senior Sponsor tell me that was the wrong decision. I have had many thank me for thinking in that way and confirming to me that they prefer this approach.

Why do organisations second rising stars to projects? It’s not because they think they will make the project better and deliver a better result quicker. It’s because of the learning and development opportunities that are possible on projects are not possible in other places in the organisation. The company is willing to invest in the rising star’s learning and a project is a good place to do that.

As Project Managers, we have a duty to be long on people development and we don’t think about that enough on the projects in our care.