Track your progress
Project managers bring credibility to an effort, especially when the person in that role reports to you. Perry wanted to get everyone focused on best practices and she felt a project manager would help her stay tuned in to the progress that was being made toward putting her company back on the right path.
“When you have an individual who reports to an executive owner on a project on a regular basis, they tend to have more legitimac
y and more credential,” Perry says. “They can move through the organization laterally much more easily than someone who just reports to a manager or is just another day-to-day person.”
Find someone with the skill set of a leader who you can have confidence in to keep the process moving without your constant involvement.
“[It should be] someone who is very goal-oriented, very passionate and very high energy,” Perry says. “They have to have excellent communication skills and very good people skills because they are influencing change through the efforts of other people.”
Your appraisal of a project may include regular meetings with your project manager. But you shouldn’t feel the need to get a constant score of the game, as it were, for your team’s efforts.
“More important for me than to know precisely where we are on track or off track is to feel the pulse of the organization,” Perry says. “The more open door, the more accessible a CEO or any C-level individual is as a person, the more credibility and confidence your team is going to have toward you. At the end of the day, being a good leader means that you have the ability to get things done through other people.”
Focus on being a good listener when you speak with people and be sure not to just be thinking about what you want to say when the other person is done speaking.
“Slow down and speak in smaller sentences,” Perry says. “If you take the time to breathe, you’re going to learn how to pause. And if you pause, that allows someone else to interject. That creates a two-way dynamic instead of just communication. That’s really important. I try to slow down and spend lots of time listening and give lots of pause.”
One-on-one meetings with various people involved in a project can be very effective at getting a good read on how things are going. Perry keeps specific notebooks on the people who she talks with regularly.
“They have their own notebook and I just keep a running list of challenges and opportunities and I review that before I meet with them again,” Perry says. “Then you know what was said or what were the burning issues or successes that [the] individual is experiencing at the moment.”
