Dates: 13 May 2010
Times: 19:00 to 21:00
Venue: Holiday Inn, Oxford

A quick search on the internet will produce many lists of what good behaviour looks like for project managers. Traditionally, a project manager’s performance is measured in terms of hitting deadlines, meeting budgets and delivering quality products.

In this presentation, Hilary Small presented CITI’s research on high performance project managers. The initial research was undertaken in the 1990s and has been further developed since then with the results of thousands of project managers who have completed on-line questionnaires and participated in interviews.

He looked at the characteristics of successful project managers and discussed the behaviours and attitudes that underpin their approach and their success. The analysis looked at:

• a ranked list of nine project manager behaviours
• the responsibilities undertaken in a project manager role
• how time is spent on key activities when acting as a project manager
• how a number of project manager competences are ranked.

Hilary illustrated his talk using examples and stories from his own experience and from the public domain. A copy of his slides can be downloaded via the above link.

Hilary has been a principal consultant at CITI since 2005. This followed a period of working on projects and programmes in the USA, Canada and South America. Clients included the Lexus dealership in Hawaii, the Ministry of Justice in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the Diavik diamond mine in the Northern Territories of Canada, and a winery not too far from Santiago, Chile. There were some slightly less exotic locations (but nevertheless challenging programmes and projects) in between.

Since his return from the USA, Hilary has had a focus on assessment and development of project, programme and portfolio capability. He assisted in the extension of CITI’s profiling ‘toolkit’ to include programme management and PPSO staff, and contributed to the development of a career path and development framework for a Government department. Hilary has been a bell ringer for over forty years, and is developing an interest in gardening, having recently acquired a small part of Buckinghamshire.