The Shadow Hierarchy
Navigating the Politics of Company-Wide Initiatives
Hey, fellow Leader 🚀,
I am Artur, and welcome to my weekly newsletter. I am focusing on topics like Project Management, Innovation, Leadership, and a bit of Entrepreneurship. I am always open to suggestions for new topics. Feel free to reach out to me and share my newsletter if it helps you in any way.
A major company-wide initiative is started, and almost every department assigns roles and responsibilities within its scope. A dedicated Project Lead is appointed, and before we know it, different department heads assign a dozen more people responsible for following up on parts of the same project. It is like having all hands on deck, but with an excess of management responsibilities and overlapping scopes. The fun starts when the first issue occurs, and meetings are scheduled with a series of managers and technical staff. Before we realize it, everyone is chipping in with opinions and “best moves forward”. The project leadership might seem obscure and all over the place.
Why All These Assignments?
Different people are assigned to lead various parts of the initiative or project, simply because major stakeholders want to have their own “eyes and ears” on the ground. Nobody openly expresses the real reason for these assignments. Instead, they mask them with different objectives to fulfill:
To better coordinate resources within the department or team.
To ease complexity by bringing in expertise that will greatly improve visibility.
Person X has years of experience with this type of project and will help the team push the initiative forward.
The problem with these assignments is that they are not centrally decided. They are primarily defined by a series of higher and middle management across the company with one objective in mind: if the project fails, they need the right arguments to save their own “backyard” from the storm that will follow.
Understanding this is key, but in order to preserve our patience through endless conflicts, let’s prepare some guidelines on how to navigate these scenarios.
How To Navigate As The Informer
If you have been tasked to assist on a major project, congratulations! You are likely the “informer” for your management. You are probably also expected to follow this particular project on top of other initiatives already within your scope. Consequently, the chances that you are less than thrilled about this assignment are high. However, your role is viewed as vital, especially given the criticality of the assignment. Your main objective is to ensure the scope you are tasked with runs smoothly. Meaning no surprises, everything delivered with the expected quality, no cost overruns, and on time.
The best way to avoid surprises is to spot potential risks or issues as early as possible. However, attending a meeting simply to report that “Risk A” or “Risk B” is a potential liability is not enough. It is crucial to report these issues alongside mitigation actions. While these actions may be debated by the project team, the risks are at least identified and accounted for.
Check in with the team daily on execution, and pay particular attention if everything seems to be going too smoothly. Technical staff often avoid bringing bad news to management at all costs. That is why such news usually surfaces only when a task is days away from its deadline. Behind the scenes, ensure you account for buffers in the timeline and keep tabs on project meetings and the performance of other teams. Remember, the primary reason you were assigned to this project is to be the “eyes on the ground”. Gathering information is key to providing your management with the necessary visibility and safeguards when critical moments arise. The closer you are to the project leadership, the better your information and the quality of your insights.
How To Navigate As The Project Lead
Congratulations! You have a series of “spies” on your project, and execution is being monitored very closely by various stakeholders. Some of whom are not transparent about their intentions. This is a reality of corporate life. Everyone is simply doing their best to protect their scope and reputation.
The most important thing is not to take it as a personal attack every time an idea or action you propose is dismissed. Everyone is managing their own risks and ensuring that execution doesn’t blow up in their faces. My suggestion is to listen first to the ideas others are proposing and the reasoning behind them. Then, propose your own ideas and actions. Listening first ensures you possess the information beforehand, providing you with the right arguments against potential opposing views. However, in the end, what matters most is taking the best action forward. It doesn’t matter who proposed it. What matters is that the next step is the most effective one. You are simply better informed.
Your success is tightly linked to the success of the project. Be mindful and avoid micromanaging every aspect of it. In fact, make good use of all the “spies” the project structure has provided you. In theory, they are assigned to the project, so they are all working for you. Do not be wary of seeing too much initiative across the staff. Cultivating initiative is one of the most challenging aspects of leading complex projects. If this initiative is a given, simply navigate it. Stay close to those who are making proposals and tap into decisions you deem important. Influence those decisions. Influence is superior to authority. Navigating what people will do is far more effective than telling people what to do. Navigation implies the initiative comes from the individual, meaning they are trusted with a set of actions and feel their voice was heard. Conversely, authority implies that you have told them what they are supposed to do. Influence instead of giving orders.
The Unspoken Tax Of Project Follow-up
The meetings. All these overlaps in project follow-up (representing multiple views and interests) inevitably create a burden of meetings. It is critical to protect technical staff from meeting overload. For every minute an engineer spends in a meeting, the project loses a minute of progress. This has a direct impact on the timeline and is a cost frequently overlooked by less experienced management. To reduce this “tax”, I recommend establishing direct lines of communication with various stakeholders. I am a big fan of using dedicated MS Teams channels with relevant individuals to exchange information, or casually jumping on a quick call without the need to involve the engineers.
If formal meetings must be scheduled, a “Management Call” every two weeks is often sufficient. People tend to normalize weekly cadences, yet a bi-weekly frequency is enough to maintain alignment. However, be mindful that scheduled management calls do not replace the need for casual touchpoints with key stakeholders throughout the week. If you are in the office, schedule a coffee with these stakeholders to discuss ideas and progress. If you are working remotely, a simple message on Teams to share information can be just as effective.
That’s it. If you find this post useful, please share it with your friends or colleagues who might be interested in this topic. If you would like to see a different angle, suggest it in the comments or send me a message.
Cheers,
Artur
Brilliant breakdown of somethin I've seen play out way too many times. That part about cultivating influence over authority really nails it becasue I've watched project leads burn out trying to control every detail when they could've just worked with those "informers" as allies. The bi-weekly meeting cadence is smart too, saw a team save probably 10 hours a week switching from weekly syncs.