The right people for your projects

Selecting collaborators and putting together teams is a crucial moment in any organization. In fact, these choices are what chiefly determine the outcomes of work projects, the flow of company processes and even the quality of office life and interpersonal relationships among co-workers. This is why it’s so critical for companies to outline the appropriate characteristics and establish best practices for finding the right people. But who are they, and how do we identify them? What characteristics do they need in terms of skills and behaviors? And what qualities do organizations want most?

We can make the assumption that companies look for the right people to make innovation happen through projects, and that project-based work in turn is highly contingent on the characteristics of the people involved. In light of this, a recent study set out to discern the characteristics of these people on one hand, and on the other to come up with a way to understand whether in a given organization there are people who possess these qualities, and how to develop and enhance them.

The study revealed that it is possible to help companies define and select the right people to tackle their projects and to create an organizational context (decisional and operative) that facilitates their work.

It’s true that in many organizational contexts what’s lacking are the conditions and mechanisms that facilitate project-based work. This is because managers and decision-makers don’t have what it takes to act as facilitators, either in terms of knowledge or awareness. Yet it’s clear that when organizations think and act on a project basis, placing the people who are assigned to the project at the center, they perform better than organizations that don’t.

By adopting both a qualitative and a quantitative approach, we came up with a definition of the skills that companies need from their project managers, and from people who have to create the context conditions for the project to be realized. We use the label ‘the right people’ to identify those who possesses the proper skills and behaviors to take on a role in a given context, either to accomplish a task or to act as a decision maker (these ‘right people’ could be project managers, members of the executive management team, area managers, etc).

Two types of skills are top priority for organizations. On one hand, there are technical-professional skills, that can be divided according to project specifications, in other words, skills that are linked to the use of methodologies and technical tools typical of project management. On the other, there are transversal skills which are associated with the use of methods and tools shared by several business units and by similar roles. In this area what proves essential is getting the big picture, and being able to go to the heart of the matter. The right people also know how to spot and seize opportunities, make sure various project phases flow seamlessly, and utilize a sequence of different tools to fine-tune the project at hand.

Transversal skills can be cognitive, which have to do with the ability to gather information on the environment and then analyze this information, transforming it and utilizing it to act in the surrounding context. These skills can also be relational, inherent to the individual. In the second case, they have to do with knowledge, competencies and abilities that tie into intra- and inter-personal dynamics: from an awareness of one’s own emotional state to self-confidence; from dealing with personal emotions to being adaptable; from empathy to customer orientation; and all through the ability to shape the potential of others and to work in a group. The role of motivator, for oneself and for others - but also of ‘group relationship manager’ - is critically important in this area. The project leader is at the center of the action, and serves as a stable, constant point of reference for the team.

What also emerges from the study is how important people’s ethical-value side is. Though not actually classifiable as skills, a sense of responsibility, integrity, honesty, fairness and respect for the rules: all these represent elements that underpin upstanding behavior within an organization, traits that are highly prized and sought after in every company.

The Covid-19 pandemic will have major repercussions on how work is organized, primarily in terms of the work methods utilized by countless business units.

From one day to the next companies have been forced to adopt smart working in one form or another, which many observers quickly hailed as the cure-all for every organization. But actually, the transition simply consisted of transferring work methods and procedures from a room in an office to a room in the home, without the slightest modification of any of the tasks assigned to employees. Basically, technology helped replicate a work world that is very similar to the traditional one, the only difference being that our bosses and colleagues no longer work in close proximity.

Organizations have introduced new work methods which they’ll be using for some time in the future. But they’ll need to give these methods a different meaning, rendering them truly “smart.” To this end:

• Working from home will call for revamping roles and responsibilities, autonomous and delegated tasks, but also processes, procedures and methods for monitoring personnel as well.
• The spatial separation of people’s work will to some extent alter the influence of some ‘ingredients’ (perceptions of collective work, affective aspects of relationships, sharing cognitive schemes) which make up relationships among co-workers, and between bosses and employees.
• Smart working will have to become the new normal, above all in terms of the conception of the worker as the pillar of the business. At the center of everything must be a goal orientation, the focal point of a new organizational approach where ‘smart’ workers are a part of an organic system made up of people who work like freelancers without actually being freelancers, from a legal or contractual standpoint.

What’s striking is the fact that in order for real smart working to work, companies need to find the right people whose mindset is clearly focused on projects.