Project Management and Team Culture

How important is the PMO at shaping the culture of the project management teams?  Should culture be left up to the project manager instead?

The project management office (PMO) cannot be separated from the overall culture of the team and organization. There is only so much a single manager can do to set the cultural tone for the team. The organization invests power within the manager, sets the timetable based upon external pressures, and also is responsible for budgeting and other areas that the manager does not have complete control over, even as a leader. The organization itself also is responsible for how it rewards different behaviors. For example, if an organization places a heavy emphasis on competition and rewards individuals based upon individual efforts, through bonuses and promotions, promoting teamwork will be an uphill struggle for the manager. Similarly, if the organization has a number of layers of bureaucracy that are necessary to pass through to make decisions, encouraging independence and quick thinking can be very difficult for the manager.

In essence, it is impossible to solely leave the creation of a project team culture in the manager’s hands, nor is it fair. The organization as a whole must take responsibility for setting a tone and culture in the way it incentivizes certain behaviors, and the ways in which employees are encouraged to maneuver and move their way on teams and to negotiate their careers. A single project cannot set the culture of an organization, rather it is a reflection of larger social pressures. Corporate culture has been alternately defined as collective programming of an organization, or organizational personality (Banister-Hazama & Hazama, 2014). This is not something that can be easily changed, and often requires specific initiatives by the larger entity to achieve. For example, if waste and a lax attitude towards quality is part of the corporate culture, then specific quality standards and methods (such as setting standards for all products regarding a lack of defects) must be employed.

However, it is also true that when the organization desires to revitalize its culture, it is very easy to become mired in a top-down approach. The organization must look at the relative satisfaction of employees, including what they wear, where they eat lunch, and if the members can adequately explain the company’s value and philosophy (Banister-Hazama & Hazama, 2014). If members of the organization are unclear as to what this is, this suggests a weak culture that does not support important project management objectives such as timeliness, efficiency, and quality (Banister-Hazama & Hazama, 2014). There must also be clear accountability regarding how things get done, which must be enforced by the project manager, but also backed up by the PMO as a whole.

The manager is clearly an important individual between the organizational leaders and is the face of the company team members see every day. But even the best project manager is no replacement for a strong organizational culture, and even if some projects are still completed successfully, overall, a weak culture and PMO will ultimately result in a lack of an effective rewards and monitoring system to determine what has and has not worked in the past and how the company can engage in continuous monitoring of quality and timetables to do better in the future while making optimal use of resources.