Programme Managing Organisational Performance and Innovative Improvement

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- BEHAVIOURAL PROBLEMS

3.2.1. Lack of communication

According to Clement and Gido (2006:329) project managers need to be good communicators. They need to communicate regularly with the project team, as well as with any subcontractor, the customer, their own organization upper management, and other stakeholders. Effective and frequent communication is crucial for keeping the project moving, identifying potential problems, and soliciting suggestions to improve project performance, keeping abreast of the customer satisfaction and stake holder issues, and avoiding surprises.

Reichart did not have a kick off meeting with everyone to give the project overview, roles and responsibilities, processes, procedures and expectations. He also did not have status review meetings. Even though he experienced program schedules slippage and excessive expenditures he kept quiet and did not communicate to the top management, stakeholders and project teams. Problem solving meeting would have played a big role in getting the team members to solve some of the problems earlier. Even when recommendations and changes were done over him he kept quiet and accepted the changes instead of getting help from the program manager and top management.

3.2.2. No team work

Clement et al (2009:364) a project team is more than a group of individuals assigned to work on one project; it is a group of individuals working interdependently and cooperatively to accomplish the project objectives. Team work did not exist in the Trophy project. The line managers were charging direct labour time to Reichart’s project but working on their own “pet projects”. Reichart’s staff supplied by the line managers was inadequate to stay at the required pace. The functional managers still did not provide adequate resources for recovery, assuming that the additional man power Reichart had received from corporate would accomplish the task. According to (HAROLD KERZNER, Project Management 10th edition), It is important for the project manager to have the best available resources. Functional managers should not commit to certain people’s availability. Rather, the functional manager should commit to achieving his portion of the objective within time, cost, and performance even if he has to use average or below-average personnel. If the project manager is unhappy with the assigned functional resources, then the project manager should closely track that portion of the project. Only if and when the project manager is convinced by the evidence that the assigned resources are unacceptable should he confront the line manager and demand better resources. The project managers argued that the line managers were not fulfilling their promises whereas the line managers were arguing that the project managers’ requirements were poorly defined. To alleviate the problem, a new form was created which served as a contractual agreement between the project and the line managers who had to commit to the deliverables. This resulted in “shared accountability” for the project’s deliverables.

3.2.3. Lack of customer focus

Clement et al (2009:364) it is the responsibility of the project manager to make sure that the customer is satisfied that the work scope is completed in a quality manner, within budget, and on time. There was lack of customer focus by the project manager, corporate staff and line managers. The corporate was concentrating mainly on putting the project back on track and not on focusing on the requirements of the customer. Line managers were concentrating on their own projects. When the customer requested the Divisional General Manager and his entire staff visit the customer’s plant to give a progress and a get well report within a week. He did not see the customer’s request as important. He called Reichart must visit the customer and take three or four of functional line people. The Divisional General Manager said Reichard must soothe the customer with whatever he feels it’s necessary. Clearly it’s not how an organisation must treat a customer.

3.2.4. Blame game in senior management

Executive leaders are the guardians of an organisation’s values, beliefs and guiding principles requiring them to be role models of the organisation’s preferred culture. According Steyn and Schmikl (2016:63) with an absence of trustworthy supportiveness and behavioural role-modelling from executive leadership, an organisation also “a fish rots from its head”, soon paralysis everything below it. The Corporate Vice President came to Reichart’s office and said that in a project he looks at the top sheet of the paper and the man whose name appears at the top of the sheet is the one he holds responsible. The Corporate vice president is putting the blame on Reichart for the failure in project. Reichart did not have the support from the start of the project.

- OPERATIONAL PROBLEM

- Poor planning

The project was not planned correctly and could have been managed much better had there been a good plan. The program schedules started to slip from day one. Staffing for the project was inadequate. Given that resources were needed from various departments to complete the project, there must have been expectations right from the start on how much of their time and involvement is needed for the project and ensuring that they are working full time on the project. In regards to expected documents, there seems to be no project charter and project plan against which the project was being tracked, along with regular weekly review meetings until six months into the project. The progress report was realised after 6 months. Presence of these documents would have ensured that there is proper planning in place, with issues being identified and resolved proactively, the absence of which lead to project failure. The project scope, resource requirements, schedule and the budget were not well defined. The project did not describe how the project team would be structured or where authority lines were drawn for tasks priorities and structure units. There didn’t appear to be a clear objective outlined for the project and resources were not efficiently utilized or properly managed. Lastly, the customer was allowed to interfere with internal business while trying to solve intrinsic problems within the project that were outside the scope of the project using the company’s resources.

- Lack of Top management support

There was a lack of leadership support from senior management. In the Trophy