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Change Management Interview

Interview Transcript, Judy - A Middle Manager's Experiences As A Project Leader

Jim: This is Jim Canterucci of Transition Management Advisors. Thanks for joining us. At Transition Management Advisors we specialize in corporate change management and attempt to bring you stories from the field that will help you in your daily work environment to manage change more effectively.

Our interview today is with a client named Judy. Judy represents a middle manager in a large organization who was chosen to be in a major project leadership role.

Judy works in a top10 financial institution on the east coast. The project she was recruited for was the implementation of a large main frame and client-server based trust accounting system offered by a vendor. The project life cycle is about two years, impacts approximately 1,000 users and has a project team that grows to 100+ representatives from the Information Systems and user communities.

My role in the project was to serve as the external project manager responsible for the overall success of the project, management of the outside vendor resources, as well as to be a member of the project management team, providing advisory services to these project leaders.

Judy, welcome. Could you start out by telling us how you were chosen to participate on the project and how your manager broke the good news to you?

Judy: Hi Jim. It's great to talk with you again. Sure. I think I was chosen probably for two reasons. I've been around the securities industry for more years than I'd like to say, so I had a lot of in-depth industry knowledge, knew how a trust accounting system should work. Coupled with that I had a rather natural inquisitive nature about how systems work and had gained a reputation for that. It was easy, I think, for my manager, when she was asked to find a candidate in her organization that would do well bringing the system in, for her to choose me. She knew that I would be excited about it as well.

Jim: What was your initial reaction when you heard about this?

Judy: Wow! Great! Because it did seem to me initially, right off the bat, as a great opportunity to, quite frankly, get away from the day-to-day, what could become kind of mundane routines and get into a situation where I could appease my natural curiosity.

Something new, something exciting.

Having said that. My second reaction was, holy cow, what have I just gotten myself into? What am I supposed to do? I was being asked to be one of the management team on a project and I had never been in that situation before. I'm a production person. I've always managed production and people. I didn't know what being on a project meant.

Jim: Was there any training available to you?

Judy: Oh Jim, you're kidding right? No, of course not.

Jim: Looking back, what kind of training would you have liked to have seen, and had available to you?

Judy: Well, some what seem to me now like common sense types of things. I needed somebody to help me understand what project life meant and what it was about, especially coming from the background that I came from. I was very used to having daily task oriented things going on. You could see the beginning, you could see the end. I knew how to manage that and the people around it. Project life was very different. This was a very long project. It went for a couple of years. I didn't have a clue how to manage tasks over that length of time, or the people that were really performing the tasks. I wish now someone could have told me then what it was going to be like and how to do that. It is different from regular life.

Jim: How did you actually learn those things?

Judy: Well, a couple of ways I guess. Trial and error of course. Unfortunately, some of the things I now know I earned the hard way. It was pretty painful for me personally and quite frankly, for the people that worked for me. They didn't have any of the skills either when they came on. Certainly, there was one other way. I made a point to track down and find other people who had already been through this. You know, the lessons learned by others kind of concept. And, I thank you. You were one of those people and always there for me. Unfortunately or fortunately, I had you and one other person that had been down this road before. You'll recall some of the late night conversations we had Jim where you really helped me get over the hump in understanding this. But beyond you two folks there wasn't anybody else.

Jim: You do have that tendency to feel like you're out there on your own. It's a very personal thing as well. We are talking about tasks and skills but it really impacts you internally. There is a direct personal impact.

Judy: Absolutely.

Jim: How was the project management team, structured? Tell us a little about the project and how it worked.

Judy: Well of course, you were there. You were part of our management team representing the outside vendor for the system we acquired. From the bank side we had an executive project manager. But, he wasn't a proactive project manager if you will. He was located at one of our affiliate sites and frequently wasn't onsite for me to run to for help. So there was floundering for me because of that particular choice that was made.

Besides myself, on the project representing the business units, there was a representative from the information systems group, the technical folks. There was a representative from the business analyst team as well. With three key project managers, an executive project manager and yourself, that is what we looked like.

Jim: How many project team members were you responsible for managing? Because, you had to take care of all of the business resources that were contributing to the project right?

Judy: That's true. At the low end 10 and at the high end 25. We grew and obviously towards the end grew more significantly. And we had some, early on, management changes so it varied for me.

Jim: Our project went for a long period of time, about two years, so normal organizational changes occur during that period of time as well as, because we've got people involved in the project, we have personnel changes. People need to move on and so forth. The project team grows and changes and really has its own life.

What were some of the difficult situations that you encountered that were representative of how a large change project is different from the regular day-to-day activities when you're managing a department?

Judy: As I said earlier Jim, probably the most significant problem for me was that I came from the business units and was very comfortable with very short term tasking and setting the targets and managing to the time resources around those targets. But with a large project of this size that went over the time period that it did go over, that changed dramatically. Because we staffed this project from the business units with business people, the people who reported to me didn't have any of those skills either. Unfortunately for them they couldn't come to me for help because I couldn't help them. I couldn't help myself. And that was some of the stuff that we learned the hard way.

Jim: This is kind of a tough question, but were there ever any times when you were in the middle of the project when you said, gee, this isn't worth it?

Judy: Oh yes, of course. In my worst times, every day.

Jim: What kept you going as you came across those types of situations?

Judy: Two things I guess. I would of thought I was quitting if I had given up. That's just my own personality. But, probably more importantly is, through all the trial and error and your help and others help, one thing that I felt I was not in control of would get better. It shed a little light and made you feel a little bit better and provided hope that if one thing got better then maybe the rest will.

Jim: I think one thing that is really true and I've seen it over and over again is, there are some people who can't do project life but it really is a very small percentage. Most people can, they just don't know it. It is a difficult process, but we are good people, we care about our job and we can overcome those kinds of things.

We should point out the project was ultimately successful. Describe some of the positive experiences.

Judy: Yes, it was successful. I'm very glad that we could say that today. There were some positives. I don't want it all to sound negative. It was frightening for me but I could sit here today and look back and smile. A couple of things. The fact that I was exposed to project life. While I learned it more the hard way, I have that now under my belt and now I find that even back in a production unit, and I have been for nine or ten months, how I manage in the day-to-day production is a little different. I bring now to the production unit the project life cycle skills that I did learn.

Jim: So you are using some of those skills that you picked up?

Judy: Absolutely. And, hopefully I am working with my direct reports to try and give them some of those skills. New projects pop up all the time. Not of the scale that I was exposed to but I now appreciate far better when someone walks up and says to a person, congratulations, I hear you're now on this nifty, handy-dandy project we now have. The panic that person experiences. I can now help someone with this because I've had that experience. But I do wish there was someone who could come in and formalize this. Because I didn't learn enough. There are a number of things I'm still not comfortable with.

Jim: One of the major skills you learn in project life is to be a teacher. That's always nice to bring back to your team.

Now that some time has passed and you're back in an operational role, do you miss the pain and agony of project life?

Judy: Can you believe it Jim? Yes, I do. Not every day, not all the time, but I do. Kidding aside, I don't know that I'm ready for it again. I think to myself, what if my manager walked in the door and said, guess what, we have another one for you. I do still choke a little bit thinking, how would I react to that, having learned everything I think I did learn? I don't think I'm ready. I think I'd hesitate because I didn't learn enough. And I can think of all of those things that I never really got my arms around. I know I don't have the skills to handle it for the next one.

Jim: So, one experience, in your case a big experience, doesn't necessarily give you all of the tools that you need.

Judy: It really doesn't.

Jim: Thank you Judy for sharing your experiences with us today. I believe, after years of being involved with change management projects that your experiences are quite typical of what many business people go through. This scenario today is even more prevalent as corporate change is the norm rather that the exception.

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To discuss how Transition Management Advisors can bring the type of education that prepares a manager for the task of change project management in your organization, please contact us at 800-370-7373.