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Welcome to our occasional newsletter – for July 2010. We would like to offer some tips, guidance and case studies that may help you improve the effectiveness of your work. In this edition, there’s a reminder of who we are and what we do, an example of something we’ve done recently for a client, an introduction to our assessment system and a 'tip of the day'.
John Faulkes and Ralph White - July 2010
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We can help you by:
- Making projects work better in your company
- Building trust and enhancing collaboration across partnerships and alliances
- Finding the keys to unlocking motivation and engagement of your people
- Coaching people who have to lead in complex situations
- Assessing the companies you invest in and measuring their potential to run projects efficiently
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John |
Ralph
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Improving collaboration and engagement at work is one of the most cost-effective things you can do! It can make a dramatic difference at a time when you can't make major investments or hire staff freely.
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Meet us in 2010!
Meet us at the Pharmaceutical Industry Project Management Group (PIPMG) Meeting on November 24-25th. The topic is "Project Managers in Pharma and Biotech - are we qualified for the job?“
See more information here
We will be running a two-day Project Management course in October 2010 for new and aspiring PMs, organised by One Nucleus (the new organisation created by the merger of ERBI and the London Biotechnology Network).
Also of interest to you may be the One Nucleus Project and Alliance Management Special Interest Group, which we've been asked to help establish in the coming months. We will keep you informed. Check out One Nucleus here.
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Case study – measuring the health of a partnership
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In the last year we have been engaged in a pilot study with a major organisation to identify the KPIs of 'relationship health'. We facilitated the ongoing development of a project team-CRO contract and worked with all the members to understand what makes the difference between success and failure in startup, ongoing communication and team performance.
The challenge for us was to develop a method to regularly measure these factors, in addition to the usual trial metrics, in a way that would generate quick, clear and accurate indications of the 'people' aspects of the relationship. The outputs needed to be used by the Company's Outsourcing managers, acting as facilitators in ongoing project review meetings.
Detailed web questionnaires, competing for team members’ time alongside other web traffic, were not an option. We therefore developed a visually-based, interactive assessment that is quick and fun to use. This system has worked very successfully so far! We have assessed the pilot partnership repeatedly. The team was happy to complete each iteration, and the results shown at review meetings were seen as accurate feedback. It has prompted positive discussion and action planning for continuous improvement.
You can see more about this, as well as arranging to try the assessment yourself if you wish - see details here.
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How can you make your operation as effective as possible?
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Developing confident leadership approaches in your project leaders/managers
Stepping from a functional/scientific expertise role into a project leading, cross-functional one is critically helped by coaching and mentoring, as well as basic training. We can help with this - See more here.
Take action exactly where you need to
We can assess your strengths and the barriers to effective project working, using brief meetings, and, where relevant, our quick online tools. See more details here.
Building trusting collaborative working between you and your partners
The 'infernal triangle' of minimum cost, minimum time and maximum quality tells us that you a project can achieve any two, but never all three. But we're starting to learn that one thing can positively change this maxim - building high trust. Recent research concludes that where trust is the primary driver in a relationship, rather than stringent conditions and precise detail, contract performance improves between 20 - 40%. See more here.
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Key Tip – Can a team make a decision?
We hear plenty of gripes as we visit various companies, but the most common one is - "we (or more usually 'our management') are really slow at making decisions".
But we know in our business, just acting faster is not the answer. Decisions have to be right. Making the 'right' call is difficult, because with so many of the challenges that face us, there are significant amounts of money involved, or there are painful consequences of failure. Secondly, at the time the decision is taken, there will be a lot of remaining uncertainty about the likely outcome.
Given the cross-functional nature of our work it's not surprising that we grapple with decisions in teams - portfolio committees, project teams, and so on. These operate with varying degrees of effectiveness but in general there are two ways we try to improve: adopting common systematic approaches - step by step processes - and secondly by increasing the clarity and understanding of roles and responsibilities.
The second one of these is the focus of an interesting debate - whether or not you should adopt 'single point' decision making, where all relevant issues are thoroughly reviewed by team members, but there is only ever one (formally identified) person who takes the final decision. Some companies have adopted a slightly different version of the RACI matrix (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) - the 'DRCI' (Decision Maker, Recommenders, Consulted, Informed) which emphasizes this discipline.There is no one approach that is right for everyone.
 Our key tip is simple - those that are the most effective will be the ones who have taken some time out to review their decision-making effectiveness and made some plans to implement approaches that feel right for them.
We have lots of experience in working with groups who are reviewing their decision-making approach - get in touch at any time and we'd love to chat further.
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www.ppmld.com
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Our registered address is: PPMLD Ltd, 132 Burnt Ash Road, London, SE12 8PU, United Kingdom
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Our telephone Number: +44 (0)20 8852 2758
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Copyright © 2010 PPMLD Ltd All rights reserved.
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