I’ve recently been talking to a client about the two key pillars of project delivery - Technical Maturity and Emotional Maturity. Our discussions have been lively, challenging and have strengthened my feelings around what delivery success looks like.

Reflecting on these conversations, my assessment is that many organisations largely invest in one or the other. The reason behind why they never achieve consistent project success is that they never address both and continue to hope that investment in one will produce the desired results. It rarely does.

This is something that I grappled with myself as a former business leader who was often asked to turn around an underperforming team. The challenge was usually presented to me in one of the following ways:

‘We have a team of highly capable people, who know how to connect with their teams and stakeholders and communicate in a way that delivers a message clearly. However, they lack the toolkit to deliver in a consistent manner or else sponsors don’t understand what’s expected of them when it comes to benefit delivery.’

Or

‘We have established processes, procedures and a set of templates that are easy to use. We have well defined job descriptions and project managers and sponsors have been on training courses to strengthen their knowledge. However, they don’t seem to know how to gain buy-in from stakeholders or else motivate their team to hit deadlines.’

The challenge for senior leaders is to create a project management function that continually increases its maturity in both of these areas to gain the consistent success rates that they’re looking for. The model for this is as follows:

Technical Maturity

1. Career pathway: job descriptions, role trajectory, succession planning, compensation packages and unambiguous HR policies around performance and behaviour

2. Tools and techniques: technical skill set (e.g. scheduling, risk management, running sprints etc.), technology to capture information and aid communication and reporting

3. Support system: processes, methods, templates, forums to continually improve the ‘system’.

Emotional Maturity

1. Agreed culture: a safe, inclusive and diverse space where people can be the best version of themselves, enterprise-wide understanding of the importance of project management and workspaces that inspire creativity

2. Personal behaviour: empathy, compassion, discipline, courage, collaboration, innovation and so on. An understanding of the personal behaviours required to get the best from team members and ensure that delivery stays on track

3. Continual evolution: a program (and personal commitment) that ensures people’s behaviours evolve to meet the challenges of tomorrow, including an awareness of global events and social changes.

My Project Leadership Academy program very much focuses on Emotional Maturity because, in my experience, this is where most organisations fall down when it comes to consistency. However, I am also asked to advise on Technical Maturity too. Too much process can be a bad thing but so can too little. It’s a constant balancing act and when you read about an organisation that gets it right, you realise just how much time, effort, behaviour change, sponsorship and investment went into achieving it.

Technical maturity ensures that there is a consistent management approach. Emotional maturity ensures that there is a consistent leadership approach and when you have both working in tandem then project success becomes repeatable. Which area are you lacking maturity in?