Project Leadership -
Blue Skies through the Trees:
 Peter
Goldsbury returned to his tiny primary school deep in
the New Zealand bush and here reconnected with its indigenous
wisdom. New lessons learnt have allowed him to lay a
fresh framework of understanding over more than 30 years
experience in project and management roles.
Professional Project Managers, who daily face the task
of leading a team to make a new future happen, will
relate to the massive challenge the tiny Maori community
at Te Whaiti faced: What to do when their livelihood,
rain forest logging, had come to an end, their spirit
was down, their school was failing? The future looked
dismal.
The school at Te Whaiti Nui-a-Toi drew on their ancient
knowledge and values to help them move quickly from
the brink of closure to a point where success has become
a constant (see their Education Review Office report
at www.tewhaiti.school.nz). Their values and beliefs
are drawn from Toi - the historical leader of the original
people of Te Whaiti. A great discoverer and visionary,
Toi established advanced and peaceful communities that
shared their art, knowledge, collective wisdom and technology.
The school knew nothing of the Project Management Body
of Knowledge (PMBOK), but the success of their transformation
process proves that they had an innate understanding
of the leadership required to make radical projects
happen. They share the following lessons with other
organisations also wishing to build a unique place for
themselves in the knowledge economy.
Lesson 0 "Return to go"- look first at yourselves
and then address the issues
The starting point was a 'live-in', where the school
board members gathered and performed a deep self-analysis;
growing an awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses
before looking outwards. "It provided a catalyst
from which our team truly started to function. Everyone
had their say and no-one wore their [leadership] hats,"
said Genevieve Doherty, school principal.
Being prepared to acknowledge the chaos of "ground
zero" in this way allows any team to build the
courage to face the issues together, question all their
assumptions, then find and exploit all opportunities
for success.
Lesson 1 Leadership is much more than the leader
In a world where the leaders of organisations are perceived
to be individuals (eg CEOs), Te Whaiti re-alerts us
to the refreshing possibility of leadership power being
shared. A Maori proverb defines leadership for them.
"Ma mua ka kite a muri, ma muri ka Ora a mua"
- Those who lead give sight to those who follow; those
behind give life to those ahead.
Maori thinking extends far beyond individuals. School
board members say "There is no room for egos around
here" and often quote another proverb: 'A kumara
(sweet potato) never calls itself sweet - that's for
the eaters to say."
Lesson 2 Capture the diversity of your team
Earl Rewi, past chairperson remembers, "When I
was first appointed chairperson I thought I would crack
the place into shape, but quickly found that was not
the way to get the board members, staff and community
to contribute all their different talents."
There is no place for the 'Matapiko gatekeepers' (stingy
knowledge withholders, firefighting project heros or
prima donnas) in the Tipu Ake environment. Leadership
is project-based and success relies on the degree to
which people are capable of sharing their knowledge,
acknowledging the power of the team, and contributing.
Lesson 3 Own your processes - keep them simple and
effective
This small community of ex loggers has no lawyers,
accountants, business people or even shopkeepers, so
finding themselves needing to take control of their
school was in their words "Very scary stuff."
They were perplexed by the complex procedures and language
that the educational system imposed. Present chairman
Chris Eketone reflects; "We asked them to explain
what they meant in simple terms and we wrote all our
internal policies and procedures into five coloured
books. Now lots of other schools want to get hold of
these."
Lesson 4 The future is behind you - so sense what is
happening around you now.
The Maori world view is natural, holistic and very
pragmatic. They say that the future is behind you and
can only be foreseen by combining the wisdom built up
from past experiences (visible in front of you), with
the collective sensing of everything that is happening
around you right now. This is what gives the group the
power to identify opportunities and threats, then to
make decisions that move everyone forward.
Kaumatua (Elder) Pahiri Matekuare offers advice about
sensing: "You can tell when you are off the course,
nothing comes and your whole mind goes blank. It's like
when you sing a waiata and your voice breaks on you
- that's a sign that you should not ignore."
Lesson 5 Wisdom and values are the product and assets
of the group
Wisdom (intellectual property) built up by collective
sensing is taonga (treasure) that belongs to the group
and loses its value if it is "sold to" or
"stolen by" others. The group has the responsibility
to treasure, grow, guard wisely and share its taonga
appropriately with others.
Kaumatua, Tipene Olsen, speaks of wisdom in an oral
tradition: "It is hidden from the naked eye, it
is passed on to you, it is inside you and comes first
from you looking at yourself. We have a saying Taringa
Whakaaro [open your ears] - you are told something once
by the elders and if you don't hear you have to go back
down and work your way back again. That's how the carriers
of the wisdom are found."
The concept of copyright ©, developed by societies
with written traditions, often fallaciously assigns
the copyright and intellectual property to the writer
of a document (who may then reassign or sell it to others),
rather than to its source, the group that grew it.
The culture of Te Whaiti School is conveyed largely
in story form. These reflect on their successes and
failures in order to reinforce their processes and confidence.
These stories form their unwritten PMBOK. (Perhaps that
is exactly what we do in PMI chapter meetings too!)
Lesson n: Be driven by outcomes, not outputs
 The
success of the school team is driven by its unrelenting
focus on outcomes: "Giving our children choices
for their futures, that we ourselves may have missed
out on." Project outputs like passing assessments
and exams are important but are really only benchmarking
milestones on the path.
Kaumatua, Andy Kohiti explains: "We see life as
a whole and the future a place we are connected with
through our children. We are the kaitiaki of all the
land, forest, wisdom, language, traditions and learning
we are given to pass on to them." Kaitiaki derives
from kai (food and sustenance) and tiaki (guardian),
which says it all.
The Tipu Ake Lifecycle - Sharing the project wisdom
of Te Whaiti Nui-a-Toi
Volunteers from the Auckland University of Technology
and elsewhere have been inspired by the people of Te
Whaiti Nui-a-Toi and totally in retrospect have helped
them capture the essence of their unique project processes
in a form that others can share. The result is the Tipu
Ake Lifecycle, - A Project Leadership Model for Innovative
Organisations.
Tipu Ake takes its inspiration from nature but embraces
much modern management thinking on leadership, teamwork,
innovation, flexibility and change. Unlike most other
organisational Capability Maturity Models (CMM's), it
focuses on promoting effective behaviours rather than
defining processes.
Tipu Ake begins in the chaos of natural decay, where
all new life begins. Ideas germinate in these undercurrents
but it takes courage, leadership and vision to push
them up. By generating a sense of common commitment
around them, we provide the supporting roots for further
growth.
The trunk represents the organisational processes that
provide the structure for growth. This includes much
conventional "project and management" thinking,
involving structures, processes, policies, funding,
and performance measures. This is where most organisations
concentrate their efforts. By comparison the three additional
levels that Tipu Ake appends on either side of this
level rely on strong "leadership". Innovative
project teams are like saplings that often must build
their own processes to quickly reach the higher levels
and gather the knowledge they need to get official support
for their cause.
Above the trunk, branches spread out, collectively
"sensing" progress - putting a sensibility
check across the organisation's processes and analytical
measurements, understanding customer outcomes, searching
for opportunities and containing risks to keep the enterprise
on track.
Flowering relates to the level of collective wisdom
- knowledge that is shared to help pollinate new ideas
and respond to rapid changes in the environment the
organisation operates within.
Fruit represents the level of wellbeing that encapsulates
the desired outcomes of the organisation and the main
stakeholders involved. It is the "reason for existence"
of an organisation and the projects that exist within
it.
Tipu (growing from within) Ake (ever upward) ki te
Ora (toward wellbeing) is not a linear process but a
cyclical one. It includes both reactive and proactive
cyclic paths.
All project professionals will relate to the "pests"
that almost daily attempt to re-cycle people to the
undercurrents (e.g. an individual ego claiming all the
credit, power / politics destroying teams, rigid inflexible
processes, measuring the wrong things, value clashes,
or letting down our guard. Pest control (alias risk
management) is what we instinctively try to do to prevent
this fall, sometimes even when a project is dead and
further flogging cannot be justified.
By contrast on the proactive side we have the "birds",
the entrepreneurs who sense what is going on around
them, gather in the accumulated wisdom and diversity
then reflect on it to voluntarily plant seeds and nurture
opportunities to promote new growth at any level. As
the lessons above show, Te Whaiti School operates almost
totally in the proactive "bird" mode.
How can Tipu Ake thinking help project management organisations?
1. One step at a time.
The tree analogy is easily understandable by all.
There is a natural and logical pathway upwards through
each level that cannot be bypassed. It demonstrates
for us the behaviours that are required for growth towards
wellbeing. Just in the way that a tree that has grown
its trunk without having established a strong root structure
(or which has had its roots undermined) will fall in
the first storm, so in an organisation we can only grow
by working on the level immediately above where we are.
If we are in chaos, no amount of reorganising at the
process level will be successful unless it is supported
by nutrients, leadership and teamwork below. (Therein
lies the reason many business projects fail - including
attempts at setting up project offices.)
2. Growing organisational capability and maturity by
projects.
A large organisation (or a nation) is like a forest.
It cannot alone say: "I am going to leap to become
the largest and tallest forest in the world." Instead,
it is totally dependent on the many individual trees
that compete for resources within it; the individual
projects that will take it upwards. On the other hand
a project, like a kahikatea tree seed, can say "I
am going to be the tallest tree in the forest and will
grow my children around me, being nurtured by and nurturing
the others in this forest." Whereas organisations
can normally only move slowly, projects can practice
the leadership, teamwork, behaviours and processes that
will allow them to rapidly climb to the higher levels.
3. Questioning assumptions and exploiting opportunity.
Tipu Ake encourages us to turn much of our past wisdom
about projects, teamwork and leadership upside down.
Radical project teams that concentrate more on learning,
questioning assumptions and exploiting opportunities
at the project initiation phase turn the traditional
PM risk matrix over. It now exists in the '-,-'quadrant,
to encourage us to think beyond risk, into the fruitful
'+,+' quadrant of opportunity. (refer PMI RiskSIG debate;
"Is Opportunity a part of Risk Management"
- PM Today May 2000)
4. Assess your own organisation's project culture
Try using the Tipu Ake self assessment tool to assess
the culture of your organisation or project team against
the model. This is included in the full model together
with a Powerpoint presentation and much more information
on the Tipu Ake website at www.tipuake.org.nz
A New Zealand project manager concludes:
"The Tipu Ake Lifecycle is an opportunist perspective
for project management professionals. Instead of just
the focus on "identifying and minimising risk in
the execution stage" that is embedded in linear
western thinking, it encourages us to think proactively
beyond "the origin" into the fruitful area
of opportunity. The model goes beyond thinking project
success is limited to delivery on time and within budget;
it considers outcomes, providing a path to enhance capability
and grow new ideas in the global climate of intellectual
wealth and rapid change."
Isobelle Gosling PMP, PMI Wellington Branch Team
The Tipu Ake team of volunteers hope that the model
will help others find their own blue skies through the
trees. If it works for you please let us know. If it
does not we also want to know why so we can learn from
your experiences too.
The author, Peter Goldsbury is an
organisational learning facilitator. He is a Project
Mangement Consultant at the Auckland University of Technology.
For the content of this story our thanks go to the people
of Te Whaiti and volunteers Karen Laugesen and Ruth
Wynyard, Communications graduates, Auckland University
of Technology who attended the launch of Tipu Ake. Photos
by David Somerfield.
All Intellectual property and copyright
of stories associated with Tipu Ake will remain for
all time at Te Whaiti Nui-a-Toi. The people there are
its guardians and gift it to the world for the wellbeing
of all its future childrens. The model can be freely
downloaded from http://www.tipuake.org.nz. Acknowledgement
is by Koha (gift based on its value to you)
Publishers are free to use Tipu
Ake information but it must always be referenced with
the footnote:
The Tipu Ake Lifecycle - A Leadership Model for Innovative
Organisations © 2002 Te Whaiti Nui-a-Toi see www.tipuake.org.nz
Editor contact: Peter Goldsbury
pgoldsbury@stratex.co.nz
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