Not all project-based businesses perform equally. Some consistently hit their expected business outcomes across the large majority of their projects, while others struggle to do so on even a fraction of theirs. The gap between the two groups rarely comes down to luck or talent alone. It comes down to a set of behaviors that high performers practice deliberately and repeatedly.
Across capital-intensive industries, the organizations that get the most out of their projects tend to behave differently from those that don't, and those differences correlate directly with project performance. In this blog, we explore four of the practices that set high performers apart, so you can apply them to your own processes and maximize project success.
The four behaviors that set high performers apart
Benchmarking against high performers is one of the most direct paths to improvement. Project professionals and business leaders alike face the necessary question, "How can we be better?" Often, the best way to answer it is to look at what the organizations you aspire to resemble are already doing.
High-performing, project-driven organizations tend to share four behaviors:
improve processes and stay consistent in their practice
establish and support a project management office (PMO)
pivot spending to align with business needs
invest in digital transformation
Here's what each of these means and why it serves as a defining factor of project success and company growth.
1. High performers improve processes and stay consistent in their practice
High-performing organizations don't achieve success by accident. It's the result of implementing a series of best practices and remaining consistent in following them. When these organizations make gains, they tend to trace them back to two things above all: better project planning and stronger, more standardized processes.
Businesses that don't focus on improving their processes are less efficient, and as a result their employee morale and returns suffer. Organizations that make steady, deliberate improvements to the way they operate internally are the ones positioned to deliver meaningful change.
2. High performers establish and support a PMO
A PMO is a department within your organization dedicated to the management of projects. Its function is to prioritize projects based on your corporate strategy and goals. It also enables the transparency of important data and serves as a point of contact for all things project related. A strong PMO helps ensure the projects with the most ROI potential get implemented within budget and without overburdening employees.
High performers tend to maintain a dedicated PMO with a clearly defined role, whether it consists of two people or 200. For organizations with offices in different regions, success often improves when each satellite office has a designated PMO to run point for the enterprise-wide PMO. This ensures clearer communication between regions and results in the strategic execution of projects, regardless of the obstacles presented by disjointed locations.
3. High performers pivot spending to align with business needs
There's never enough money to go around, which is why the strategic use of your budget is a top priority. Lower-performing organizations often concentrate the majority of their financial resources on training, hiring and improving processes. Those are valid functions and deserve a portion of the budget, but they can eclipse another essential area for project-driven businesses: portfolio and investment planning.
High-performing organizations direct meaningful resources toward portfolio and investment planning. By doing so, they see the full picture of where their capital investments are being deployed. This lets them pinpoint areas of financial waste, trace that waste directly and redirect the capital to where it will be most effective. In the long run, this saves money and maximizes ROI, the defining trait of a high-performing organization.
4. High performers invest in digital transformation
Of the four practices, this is the most important. Without the right technology, project-driven businesses cannot effectively implement the other three. High performers tend to invest heavily in automated technology and continue to increase that investment year over year.
Working with outdated tools leaves project teams ill-equipped and inefficient, and the financial cost follows. That's why high performers so often credit new technology as a major driver of their success. The investment in digital transformation pays for itself.
Becoming a high performer
You now have a good sense of the practices that separate high-performing companies from the rest. As you build your own high-performing organization, the gap between high and low performers comes down to disciplined, repeatable decisions. Foster an environment where the question "How can we be better?" is consistently asked and welcomed. By improving processes, supporting a PMO, ensuring effective use of your budget and investing in technology updates, you'll begin to cement your status as a high-performing organization and reap the financial benefits.
Ready to become a high performer within your industry? Contact us to start building your high-performance project organization.